


Dark Forces: Rogue Mission

by hayabusa1138



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Action, Complete, Dark Forces, Gen, Spy Story, UST, stormtroopers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-05-24 19:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 33,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6164056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hayabusa1138/pseuds/hayabusa1138
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after destroying the Dark Trooper Project and months after the Battle of Hoth, Rebel agent Jan Ors is sent on a dangerous mission to Coruscant without her partner, Kyle Katarn. Left alone on the Alliance dreadnaught, New Hope, Kyle is left with the feeling that his long time friend is walking into danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

*TRANSFER IN PROGRESS* 

The base's computer beeped incessantly as the data located within transferred from the memory core to the data disk plugged in it. The transfer bar slowly moved forward on the screen, taking each centimeter seemingly at its leisure.

"I should have just taken the damn thing with me," Kyle Katarn said. His brown eyes darted back and forth from the screen to the door in front of him, blaster pistol raised up to it. The corpse of the base's commander sat sprawled out in the chair next to Kyle, the blaster wound in his chest still sent smoke up into the air.

Somewhere outside of that door the remaining stormtroopers of the base were gathering and preparing their defenses. Getting into this room had been tough enough. Getting out would be harder.

TRANSFER COMPLETE, the computer screen blinked. Kyle removed the datacard from the system and secured it in the side pocket of his brown leather jacket. He removed the comlink from his belt and thumbed it on. "Jan, I've got the database, time for a lift out of here." He holstered his blaster pistol and replaced it with the rifle hanging from his shoulder.

"Copy that, Kyle," her Alderaanian accented voice said.

He walked towards the door and leaned up against the wall. His hand hovered over the control panel, gloved fingers hovering millimeters over the console. The back of his head tingled in a weird form of intuition that usually meant that danger was close by. He dropped the blaster rifle and let it hang loose around his shoulder by the sling. One of the many thermal detonators that hanged from a belt on his waist came loose with a quick tug. The spherical grenade's activation switch clicked with an easy slide and the agent quickly opened the door with his free hand. With a certain predictability, the stormtroopers outside of the door opened fire, red-hot bolts of plasma filling the empty space. Kyle tossed the detonator behind him and huddled behind the wall as the sphere exploded.

The hallway beyond the door was littered with the mangled bodies of the six stormtroopers. He walked past them and through the durasteel corridors of the Imperial base, retracing his steps towards the roof of the three story installation. He stopped at a corner near the turbolift and spied beyond it. Three stormtroopers stood guarding the lift, their white plastoid armor clacking against the floor.

He rounded the corner and fired a quick burst from his rifle, the first volley taking down the closest two soldiers. The remaining one opened fire, opting for a fully automatic volley to get Kyle to retreat back behind cover. The first shots missed the rebel agent as he sidestepped into the corridor. A bright green light flashed in front of Kyle's eyes as one of the bolts managed to find its target, but was absorbed completely by his personal shields. He aimed down the sights of his rifle and fired. The shot hit the stormtrooper in the chest and sent the Imperial down into a clump.

A trio of three frantic beeps coming from his belt sounded throughout the hallway. "Spast," he cursed as he moved the opening of his nerf leather jacket aside to check the shield generator. Another shot like the one that he had just taken wouldn't be blocked and he had used the spare power cell for it less than 15 minutes previously.

The door opened at the end of the brief turbolift ride to an empty hallway. Kyle stepped off of the lift tentatively, blaster rifle poking around the corner. He stepped out into the corridor and quickly glanced both ways. He turned left and headed towards the rooftop access hatch that he had entered the facility on, passing the bodies of the stormtroopers slain in the first minutes of the mission. 

In the distance behind him, he could hear the sound of several pairs of boots as they raced down the hallway. "Jan, I've got company," he said through his comlink as he ran down the hallway.

"You mean I have to save your hide again?" she said. He could picture her grinning in his mind's eye. "I didn't sign up for this, you know?" Kyle didn't reply, saving his breath as he kept racing down the hallway. Behind him, he could hear the plastoid boots of the stormtroopers as they followed him. He ducked into a side room and reached the ladder that led to the roof. He climbed as quick as he could, blaster rifle clanking as it hit the side of his body armor. He reached the top of the ladder as he hastened his way to the door. 

Cool evening air hit Kyle's face as he opened the door to the roof of the building. Hovering about four meters above the roof was a brown light freighter. A beak-like nose of the craft faced him and continued down the length of the ship until jutting off into two wing-like modular engines to the sides, twin tails emerged diagonally from the back. A large twin-barreled blaster cannon was underslung from its belly. "Kyle, do me a favor," Jan said as Kyle ran towards the ship. "Hit the deck."

He dove to the ground, skidding on his stomach for a meter as the door behind him opened. Above him the Moldy Crow's four laser cannons opened fire, bathing the rooftop in flashes of red light. The blaster cannon fired a lone shot that sent a flare of heat as the bolt exploded. The illumination died down and the only sound upon the rooftop was the thrumming of the Crow's repulsorlifts. Kyle stood up from the roof of the Imperial base and brushed the dust off of himself. 

"As always, I owe you one."

The Crow lowered closer to the roof as the boarding ramp swung open. "Well, you're certainly in debt."


	2. Chapter Two

** CHAPTER TWO **

 

The cockpit of the Sienar-made courier was spacious compared to her normal confines in a ship, Jan Ors thought as she lounged in her pilot's chair.  The sleek, rectangular control panels were aligned neatly: a pilot's station in front of the bow viewscreen and a copilot's console to the right.  The emptiness of the console was strange to her, as was the silence throughout the entire ship.

           

She shook the thought out of her head.  It wasn't the time for such thoughts, not with such an important mission to be done.  She stood from her seat and walked back to her cabin.  It was several hours until the ship reached its next waypoint and days before reaching Coruscant.  The perfect time to plan.

           

The transport's small cabin was spartan: a small storage cubicle to her right was crowded against a narrow cot.  On the cot were the two small storage cubes containing everything she needed for Jan Ors to become Leessa Shalmohar, a young Imperial Intelligence agent enrolling in the Imperial Academy of Interrogation.  It was a deceptively sterile name for what many of her fellow rebels and even some Imperials had named the School of Torturers.

           

She opened the larger of the two crates and rifled through the white Imperial uniforms and found the circular holoemitter hidden within.  She thumbed the emitter on and studied the human male that appeared in the flat image.  He stood around 1.8 meters tall, the writing said to the side, and wore a commander's rank insignia upon the left breast of his uniform.  He wore his shoulder-length black hair slicked back behind an oval-shaped face whose attractiveness hid the vicious reputation he had acquired.  A thin line of black beard followed his jaw line before expanding into a neatly trimmed goatee.  Blue eyes shined with a hint of malice and ambition.  Leco Daam, she thought, the head of the school and a prized pupil of Director Ysanne Isard.  Rumors amongst Alliance intelligence, all from third hand sources at their most verifiable, suggested the two had some sort of romantic connection as well.  He was known throughout Intel as a formidable, if cocky, agent and a potentially large threat in the future, especially if the rumors had merit.  It was these reasons and more that Alliance intelligence had tasked Jan Ors with infiltrating his academy and killing him.

 

The Imperial uniforms were removed from the crate and carefully placed onto the cot.  She fished her left fingers along the bottom of the crate, quickly finding the five barely noticeable pressure plates.  The false bottom came loose, revealing the gear that she believed that she would need to complete her mission: two holdout blaster pistols, a quarter of a kilogram of a low grade explosive and a detonator, a folded up cloth containing five non-metal throwing knives, an electro-garrote and an electric toothbrush.  _Well_ , she thought as she double-checked the sensor scrambler that kept all of it hidden from prying eyes, _maybe not all of it would be needed..._

 

She replaced all of the gear into the bottom of the crate and put the false bottom back into place, followed by all but one of the Imperial uniforms.  She placed the crates on the floor next to the cubicle with the intention of unpacking sometime soon.  She removed the orange tie from her silky black hair and let it fall to just past her shoulders.  The Alliance uniform was the next to go and was dropped into a lump that was destined for the ship's garbage incinerator,  quickly replaced with the Imperial uniform as her real self flowed off of her and Leessa Shalmohar replaced it.

 

Leessa, she thought, was Kuati and from a middle class family that had died while on a business trip to Alderaan.  That part, she thought bitterly, wasn't that far from the truth.  She had joined Imperial Intelligence before then and had a middling but promising career stationed in the Outer Rim amongst smugglers before applying for additional training in interrogation.

 

The door out of her cabin opened in front of her as she walked out into the deserted common room.  She took a seat at the small faux wooden table and grabbed a piece of Ithorian fruit from the bowl in the center of it.  "He offered to let me use the _Crow_ ," she said in a perfect Kuati accent.  The gesture shouldn't have surprised her; she was the one who generally flew the ship anyway, but for some reason it had.  The offer combined with what his last words to her were--or could have been.  Ever since Danuta she had been dreading that he would admit his obvious feelings towards her, and she would have to do the same.

 

No.  The thought sounded so loudly in her head that Jan was momentarily surprised that she hadn't said it out loud.  She couldn't allow herself to get so close to him--to anybody--at the moment.  Not in that way; not after so many of her comrades and friends had already given their lives for the Alliance.  And not for the fact that even after all of this time Mon Mothma still didn't fully trust him.  No matter how much she loved him, everything told her that she couldn't.

             

***     

 

Leco Daam was always uncomfortable when Ysanne Isard was in his office.  Despite their mutual attraction to each other, the woman's reputation always preceded her.  He feigned a smile at her.  It wasn't each other's attractiveness or personalities that had led them to each other, he knew, but rather their ambitions.  He needed a way to ascend higher into the echelons of Imperial Intelligence, and Isard needed someone that could spread loyalty to her throughout the entire organization.

 

Her eyes bored holes into him, the blue freezing him where he stood while the red burned its way through his defensive layers to stare at his true self.  "Your new class arrives tomorrow."  A statement, not a question.

           

"A promising group of students, if I may say so," he said.  He retrieved his datapad from the corner of his desk and handed it to her.  The director took the datapad and quickly studied its contents.  All fourteen of the students, some of the Empire's best and most promising intelligence agents, were listed within, bios full of praise and constructive criticism from Daam's colleagues.

           

"Very promising," she said.  Her face remained expressionless despite the praise of his hand-picked selections.  "Yet..."  His soul chilled as she looked up from the datapad at him.  With the quick movement of a finger she ejected the datapad's card and placed it into a pocket of her crimson uniform.

           

"You don't approve of one of them?" he said.  He braced himself for the stern berating that was bound to come next, or worse.  Isard wasn't the kind of person that tolerated failure amongst her subordinates, or even her own family if the rumors about her father were true.

           

"A hunch, commander," she said.  "One involving info that's above your security clearances."  She handed the datapad back to him roughly, the thin metal case slapping against his stomach.  "Keep an eye on your students, Daam," she said as she turned around.  "I'll be looking deeper myself."

           

"If there's something about one of my students," he said, grinning deeply, "I'll find it.  It shouldn't be any problem."

 

"Leave it to me," Isard said.  "You're too close.  You might alert them and flush them out before we're ready."  Daam's face dropped.  It had been one of the first times that her criticisms had stung so badly yet the reasons for it rung true to him.  If something were up with one of the students, he would be far too close to the matter to investigate it without raising suspicion.

 

"I'll just keep my eyes open, then," he said.

 

"Good."  Isard stepped through the open door.  Before it hissed shut, Daam heard her parting words.  "You're learning quickly." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The Sienar made ship in the first sentence is a BR-23 courier, taken from a West End Games sourcebook. Interestingly enough, it appears that in that book, the pictures of it and the Kleeque-class transport were switched. 
> 
> * The name "Leesa Shalmohar" is created by every single actress that has voice Jan Ors. Lee comes from Julie Eccles, who voiced Jan in the first Dark Forces game, ssa is from Vanessa Marshall in Jedi Outcast, as is Shal. Mo is for Mo Collins in the audio dramas, and Har is from Angela Harry, who played Jan in the live action cutscenes in Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight.
> 
> * The Imperial School of Torturers was first mentioned very briefly in Children of the Jedi. Jan's mission to kill the head of the school was a very brief sentence in one of Abel G. Pena's Dark Forces Saga RPG articles.
> 
> * The unpacking scene is a call back to a similar scene in the first Dietz novella, Soldier for the Empire, even down to the toothbrush.
> 
> * Not much is known of the fate of Jan's parents. It's stated in the aforementioned novella that she still has reason to believe that her father is still an aerospace engineer, but the entire novella takes place before ANH. Killing them off in the destruction of Alderaan just seemed like a natural thing to do.
> 
> * When I first came up with expanding one sentence in an article to a full blown story, I needed a villain. Someone vile and competent enough to have the Alliance call for his head, but also someone that an audience could identify with as a villain. I don't really like cartoon character villains, so I wanted to make Leco human. I took inspiration from a pro wrestling villain named Adam Cole, using him as the person "playing" Leco, as well as providing a quick and easy name.
> 
> * As for Isard, to quote Qui-Gon Jinn: "There's always a bigger fish." Isard looms over this whole work just like the Emperor looms over Vader in the films, the fearsome overboss that, despite their relationship, scares even Leco.


	3. Chapter 1

** CHAPTER 1 **

 

The hangar of the Rebel dreadnaught _New Hope_ smelled of a century of spilled oil and fuel.  All around the light Corellian-made freighter, the other ships were being repaired and refueled for whatever missions lay ahead for their pilots.  Kyle Katarn walked down the _Moldy Crow_ 's short boarding ramp and wiped hydraulic fluid from his hands with a rag.  It had taken three hours to install and the majority of the money he had earned in the last assignment, but the _Moldy Crow_ finally had a new hyperdrive motivator.  He took the cloth towel and quickly ran it over the grey maintenance coveralls he wore, wiping off the pooled oil.

           

"Looks like you've been busy," Jan Ors said.  Kyle looked up from his stained coveralls and saw her walk under the nose of a nearby X-wing and towards the _Crow._   Her usual field gear was gone, replaced by the blue shirt and khaki vest of the Alliance dress uniform.

           

"And you haven't been," he said.  He flashed a quick smirk her way.  "Convenient that you get called away to some meeting when I'm ready to upgrade the _Crow_.  You leave me here to complete all the hard work by myself"

           

Her brown eyes shimmered in the hangar's bright lights as a feigned look of outrage crossed over her face.  "Just like when you were 'too hurt' to help me fix her after Phaeda?"

           

"I got shot!" he said with a shrug.

           

"You call that heat blister a wound?" she said as she rose her right hand, a leather glove covering a metal prosthesis.  "I did more after this than you did then."

           

He laughed and conceded defeat.  Somehow she always had a way to get him to do that and judging by the smile on her face she knew it.

           

"As fun as this has been, I take it that you're not here just to give me a hard time," he said.

           

"No," she said.  The grin on her face faded into the thin-lipped expression she wore when things had gotten serious.  "I'm just here to say that if you get a mission in the next month or so, you're going to be on your own."

           

"Was that what that meeting was about?" he asked.  "You've got something of your own lined up?"

           

"Shouldn't be that tough of one," she said as she gave him a reassuring smile that he noticed was slightly forced.

           

Kyle gestured to the ship to his left.  "Well, if you need to use the _Crow_ , she's yours.  You usually fly her, anyway."

           

"I appreciate it," she said.  He could see the tan skin on her cheeks redden slightly.  "But the _Crow_ would be little recognizable where I'm headed."

           

"Old stomping grounds?"

           

Jan shot him a frown.  "Let's just leave it at that," she said.  "If Mon Mothma knew I even hinted at that..."

           

Kyle nodded in understanding.  He had worked with the Chief of State of the Rebellion as an aligned mercenary for over three years, but their initial first impression had been less than stellar.  "Well, where ever you're going, take care."

           

"Judging from all I've seen?" she said.  "Without me, you're the one who's going to need to be careful."

           

He watched her begin to walk away, their conversation over but with words left unsaid.  "Jan," he said.  She turned around and he thought he caught the briefest hint of apprehension on her face before quickly assuming a more neutral expression.  "If you need help, you know where to reach me."

           

"I always do."  She turned and walked away, a strange feeling entering the back of his mind.  She was walking into trouble.

 

He walked out of the hangar and towards the crew quarters where the Alliance had assigned him a cabin.  He tried to push the thought to the back of his head.  Jan had gone on solo missions several times since they had first met and had always come back unharmed.  He was worried about her, that was all, he thought. 

 

The door to his quarters opened as he neared them.  The room was small with a single cot against the far wall, storage compartments under the cot carried clothing, various personal effects and a thing or two that the Alliance didn't need to know that he had picked up during his missions.  On the right wall was a small desk that was cluttered with holopad datacards.  The datapad on the desk blinked with new electronic messages.  Kyle sat down in the small chair and picked up his datapad.

 

The first message was sent by an Admiral in the fleet, the one that had hired Jan and him to retrieve the database from the Imperial facility.  It was a simple thank you message for providing the information that led to the safe retrieval of his daughter.  The second one was more interesting to him.  A black-plated 3PO droid stood in the recording, golden photoreceptors glowing. 

 

"Sentient Katarn," the droid said in its half-monotone voice.  "I must regret to inform you that despite all of the searching and research done by myself and my subordinates, I was not able to find the name of the commander of the Imperial raid on Sulon that took place three and a half years ago.  Indeed, no such raid has even officially surfaced..."  Kyle cut the recording off and cursed under his breath. 

 

The raid had happened.  He had seen the vid images of it himself.  Jan had shown it to him before he had even joined the Alliance, back when he was still a young Imperial officer, fresh out of the academy.  He had watched as the "Rebel" troops moved with Imperial precision, shooting down both combatants and unarmed men and women alike. 

 

He could hear the concern in Jan's voice as he wanted to view the rest of it.  He should have listened to her, for there hadn't been a day in the nearly four years since that he didn't see the severed head of his father in his mind's eye. 

 

Kyle dropped the datapad onto his desk where it settled with a loud clatter.  Four years and he was still no closer to finding out who commanded the attack, nor to finding any sort of ways to pay back Jan even half of what she deserved for telling him the truth.

 

His gut dropped slightly at the thought of her and the nagging feeling in his head that he still couldn't shake.  Something wasn't right about her upcoming mission, he knew it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * As the chapter shows, it could be a long time before we see Kyle and Jan together in the same scene again. With that in mind, it became my top priority to show them at their "normal", and that means lots and lots of banter.
> 
> * Why the Crow will be easily recognizable will come in quite clearly in the second chapter.
> 
> * Mon Mothma's distrust of Kyle comes from the Soldier for the Empire novella by William Dietz.
> 
> * The black plated protocol droid is Switch, from the Dawn of Defiance adventure path.


	4. Chapter Three

** CHAPTER THREE **

 

The private office of Chief of State Mon Mothma in the _New Hope_ were spacious, an opulent reminder of the glory days of the dreadnaught when the officer in charge had only pirates to worry about.  Faded banners still hung on the walls, left there by a staff too worried about more important matters than decorating.  Mon Mothma sat behind her wooden desk, dressed in her typical white gown and consulting one of several datapads that piled up beside her.  An aide stood next to the wall, a blond woman whose lavender eyes scrutinized Kyle for a second before turning her attention back to the Chief of State.

 

"Kyle," Mon Mothma said.  She placed the datapad down and gave him her full attention.  "You commed me last night and said that you wished to speak to me?"

 

It had been an insane thought, but one that Kyle felt that he needed to take.  For three days the feeling that Jan was heading into some sort of trouble wouldn't leave him.  "I'm here to talk about Jan Ors."

 

Mon Mothma's auburn eyebrows raised slightly.  "She's away on a mission right now," she said.  "And you already know that."  Whether it was the unchanged look on his face that gave Kyle away to her or the possibility that she had seen the security camera footage from the hangar he didn't know.  "So that makes me wonder why you're here."

 

"Do you have some way to get in touch with her?" Kyle asked.  "I think she might be in trouble."

 

Mon Mothma's blue eyes widened in curiosity before quickly narrowing.  "Do you know something?"

 

"Just a feeling."  The Chief of State nodded slowly while Kyle thought he caught a quick look of recognition upon the face of her aide.

 

"I see," Mon Mothma said.  "I'm fairly certain that your 'feeling' is just worry over her being on a mission by herself.  You've seen how she can handle herself in difficult situations, so there's no need to." 

 

Jan Ors could take care of herself, that Kyle knew easily.  Together, they had taken out so many of Jabba's hired thugs after the _Moldy Crow_ was captured by the Hutt's yacht that the bounty hunters had to drop stun grenades through the docking ring to take them out.  It wasn't that which made him nervous.  It was something... _else_.  A tickling in the back of his head that still hadn't gone away.

 

"Was there anything else?"

 

"No," Kyle said.  He stepped out of the office, humiliated but thankful that he wasn't immediately dragged away to the medbay for a psych evaluation.

 

***

 

 _Three meters away and nothing to do about it_ , Jan Ors thought as she watched Leco Daam conduct one of the first lectures on how to properly interrogate prisoners.  The lecture hall was standard Imperial fare: the same uniform gray metal walls that all Imperial bases and ships used, curved rows of black plastoid desks that surrounded a small wooden lectern and a holoprojector.  She was in the second row, surrounded by thirteen other Imperial Intelligence agents.  Complying to Imperial doctrine, the agents were all human but from a variety of worlds.  She was one of two women in the class.

 

"I hope that you all have picked up a little of Huttese in your training," Daam continued with his lecture.  "Galactic Basic, Huttese and Durese are the three most common languages spoken in the Empire, in that order.  While translator droids can be useful, the context of their words in time with nonverbal communication can often be missed."

 

It was basic stuff, Jan thought, something that any Intel agent with even the slightest hint of heading into interrogation should know.

 

"If you must use a translator droid, it will be an Imperial Intelligence approved protocol droid," Daam said.  He switched the image on the holoemitter to one of a humanoid droid, the covered eye sockets large and slightly bulbous.  "This is an RA-7 protocol droid.  Most of you have seen them by now.  They're practically everywhere in Imperial service."  Daam left the lectern and paced throughout the front of the room.

 

"The RA-7s will translate only a few sentences behind the prisoner and will replicate their tone of voice to the best of its abilities."  Daam stopped in front of Jan.  "Shalmohar," he said, pointing to her in the second row of seats.  "What's a drawback of using this method?"

 

"If the sentence structure of the alien language differs from Basic, the translation can be compromised."  Daam nodded and continued on with the lecture.  He was doing that to everyone, Jan noticed.  Asking students about flaws in techniques that he had mentioned.  Most of the students questioned didn't have any idea about them, as they should have.  She would have feigned ignorance to join them if the flaw in question hadn't been completely obvious to anyone with any basic knowledge of alien languages. 

 

Daam was probing his students; that much was obvious.  To what purpose, she didn't know.  Finding potential protégés or other star students was one possibility but the other reason sent a small chill down her spine.  He could be probing for a rebel infiltrator.  The fear that the mission had somehow become compromised flipped her stomach upside down.

 

"As to the subject of droids being used in our line of work," Leco Daam continued.  The holoprojector image switched from the humanoid droid with the vaguely insectoid face to a far more familiar droid.  It was spherical with a diameter slightly larger than a human head, with a smaller sphere on the top of its northern hemisphere.  Jan had seen enough of the IT-O interrogation droids in her single lifetime than anyone ever wanted to, most of them thankfully from the other end.

 

"I know what you're all thinking.  'When do we get to use this?'  You've all heard about its reputation," Daam said.  He turned to a dark-skinned male human in the last row.  "Cedral, what do you know about this droid?"

 

Cedral stood up and addressed the rest of the group.  "It carries various truth serums and toxins, the most used lowers the subjects pain threshold."

 

"Walking feels like you're on shards of transparisteel, yes," Daam said.  "Among other things."  The instructor continued to walk throughout the small room.  "I was told, when I was in your boots here, that the best use for this droid is to simply have it.  Rebels, pirates and other dissidents know what this is and they fear it."  His icy eyes scanned the room.  "You show this to a rebel, and most of them crack right away."


	5. Chapter Four

** CHAPTER FOUR **

****

The student lounge of the academy was crowded.  Every single interrogation student were within the confines of the large room, even the two that had to be shuttled in from nearby hotels.  Jan Ors sat in one of the small couches in the middle of the room, datapad in hand.  Studying the layout of an Imperial facility was risky, but her absence would only draw more attention to herself than she really needed to have.

 

Newo Tenes was the center of attention, as always.  The burly agent was joking in front of the others with Mias, a much skinnier agent.  The two had made fast friends at the academy, but they would stab the other in the back if they needed to; such was Imperial politics.  Cedral was sitting in a nearby chair, eating from a bag of crisps and watching the pair mock fight.  Switch the uniforms and add a bit more color to the barren walls of the lounge and she could have been in any rec room in the Alliance.

 

"Mind if I sit here?"  A somewhat high pitched voice startled Jan from her study.  With a subtle movement, she changed the screen from a map of the base to a bland piece of Holofiction.  She looked up from her datapad and saw a thin framed man, his light brown hair jutting wildly down from his head.  Donlat Tascel, she remembered, a droid specialist.

 

"Go ahead," she said.  Jan eyed him warily as he sat down.  Donlat shifted his attention from the HoloScreen on the wall to the playful fight, where Mias was hanging for his life from the back of Newo.  He continued this for minutes while she flipped through the novel.

 

Jan had just stopped paying active attention to him when he spoke again.  "I saw you in the lecture the other day, you major in droids, too?"

 

She lowered her datapad and looked at him, in the quickest of seconds trying to determine if he was digging for information or just a curious colleague.  "They have their uses, but I'm mainly looking on how to do field interrogations," she said with the shake of her head.  "Not a whole of chances to work with droids there."

 

"Field interrogations?"  His brow furrowed slightly.  "Like commandos?"

 

She flashed him a knowing smile.  "It's classified."  Jan waited for a response, muscles rejecting the urge to twitch, mind urging the other student to drop the line of questioning.

 

Donlat laughed.  "Wouldn't be the Empire without keeping secrets from itself!"

 

 _Oh, if you only knew..._ Jan thought.  "Secrecy keeps security," she said.

 

His eyes dropped in thought.  "That's the Prefsbelt Sector's branch motto, isn't it?"

 

"Theirs and half the Mid Rim's.  I had a superior, years ago, who spent some time there."

 

"Most of mine have barely set foot out of the Core," Donlat said.  "And they like to look down their noses at anyone that isn't."

 

Jan gave a polite nod.  She had seen and heard how the Imperials divided even the "high culture" of humans that they so loved, splitting them by gender and by area.  Teasing at the very least and outright discrimination at the worse.

 

Donlat paused.  "I didn't mean to imply that...  You're Kuati, aren't you?"

 

"Not all Kuati nobles are so _delicate_ about criticism."  She laid her accent on as thick as she dared.  "I take it that you're not from the Core?"

 

"The Colonies region."  He shrugged.  "Too Core for the Rim and too Rim for the Core."

 

A burst of laughter interrupted the conversation as a flash of movement caught the corner of Jan's eye.  She turned around and saw that the mock fight between Newo and Mias had ended in a spectacular failure.  The two combatants had tripped over the corner of a chair and were currently laying in the shattered remains of a caf table.  The two seemed more amused than hurt, and joined in on the laughing.

 

Jan shook her head, a bemused smile on her lips.  It was _exactly_ like some of the Alliance rec rooms she'd been in.

 

***

 

The interrogation room slowly emptied of the students within.  Mias, followed by an uncomfortable looking Donlat, and the others.  Leco stood next to the transparisteel window, watching as the drugged rebel inside lay on the table, unconscious.  The interrogation droid hovered over the body, testing vital signs as the interrogator within waited to clear the room.

 

Cedral remained in the room along with Leesa, the former walking up towards him while the other hovered towards the back of the room.

 

"Commander," Cedral said.  "When do you know when to use the interrogation droid?  You said in one of your lectures that even having them could be the best weapon in our arsenal."

 

"I did.  This interrogation was to show how to use a droid in your interrogations.  Knowing when to use it is just something that an individual agent has to find out for themselves."

 

"So, there's not an exact science?"

 

Leco nodded.  He had watched everyone's reactions to the torture as they had observed it, seeing how some of them watched in disgust, impartial detachment, and one with barely concealed glee.  Cedral had been one of the few within the sweet spot of horror and detachment.

 

"Only for each agent.  Once you're out in the field, you'll be able to figure that out for yourself."

 

They continued their conversation for minutes before Cedral had cleared up any confusion that he had over the process.  Leco turned to look for Leesa as Cedral left, only to discover that the woman had left.

 

Inside of the interrogation room, the prisoner was slowly coming to.  Light-colored hair that hadn't been washed or cut in months clumped up on the table.  He had been a rebel, a member of a cell that had operated on Coruscant itself, and captured and sent to Lusankya.  Isard regularly shipped him these cast offs from her own programs for demonstrations.

 

He waited until the prisoner had been fully removed from the room before leaving, headed for his office.


	6. Chapter Five

** CHAPTER FIVE **

 

Dreadnaughts were notorious for being crew-extensive.  So desperate for crew that in the waning days of the Old Republic they had been virtually scrapped as ships, or had been heavily crewed by droids in some of the less-essential areas.  It was in one of these less-needed areas that Kyle Katarn paced.  It was at the beginning of the night shift and the cargo hold was empty of the droids that normally loaded and unloaded foodstuffs and various other needed goods.  The message that he had received that morning had been short and told him to meet them here at this hour.

 

He walked through the narrow hallways of stacked metal crates, each step of his echoing throughout the room.  The memory of the "smuggler's" ship on Cal-Seti came to mind, a maze of cargo containers where every step could have held an enemy.  He wasn't expecting an enemy today, but still came prepared.  Underneath his leather coat and between the tan-white shirt was the holster holding his blaster pistol.  He adjusted the holster as he turned a corner and entered an open area in the hold.

 

The clearing was four meters across and just as wide, the cargo crates that were slightly taller than Kyle himself were stacked three high.  Passages a meter and a half jutted off in each of the four cardinal directions.  Standing in front of the fore passageway was Mon Mothma's aide from the day before.  She was wearing a white Chandrilan-style robe that was trimmed in yellow.

 

"You said that you had a 'feeling' about your partner," she said.  She was leaning slightly against a column of crates, her lavender eyes--almost a deep violet in the lighting--continued to bore uncomfortably into him.  "Describe it."

 

Kyle looked around the cargo hold again, scanning the tops of the crates and the catwalks above.  "You get to the point, don't you?"  She remained silent and Kyle shrugged.  "All right.  It's in the back of my head and it won't leave.  It's not worry like Mon Mothma thought, it's just..."

 

"Like you know it's going to happen," she said.  "I know someone that gets these feelings a lot.  He tries to hide them from me, but I can tell.  Trust them, Katarn."

 

"So, Jan _is_ in trouble?"

 

"I don't know," she said.  "I do know that she's in a very dangerous place for a rebel right now."

 

Kyle gestured towards her.  "And that is?"

 

She smiled slightly, tauntingly almost.  "I'm not risking my job further by telling you more, Katarn.  Only that you may be right.  Trust your feelings."

 

He scoffed, the sound echoing throughout the cargo hold.  "That's it?" he said.  "You call me here in the middle of the night just for that?"  He shook his head and let loose a single sarcastic chuckle.  "Well, thanks a lot, you've certainly made this whole thing a hell of a lot easier."  He walked quickly to the entrance way through which he came  before quickly turning around.

 

"Next time Mon Mothma wants to waste my time, I suggest that she do it herself."  He turned around and stormed out of the clearing.  "And say hi to 'vision boy' for me," he shouted as he turned a corner.

 

The uselessness of the encounter burned in his mind as he made his way towards his quarters.  A clandestine meeting that resulted in an aide for Mon Mothma, who knew everything about Jan's mission, only telling him that he may be on the right track.  "She's in a dangerous place for a rebel right now," he muttered under his breath.  Where wasn't a dangerous place for them right now?  The Alliance was busy regrouping after the debacle of Hoth and the Imperials were busy consolidating their power.

 

"Old stomping grounds..."  The thought of his words days ago to her came bubbling back into his mind.  It combined with other memories and thoughts: the smile that was a little too reassuring when she said that it would be a simple mission, the _Moldy Crow_ being far more recognizable than she'd like for the place she was going.  Nar Shaddaa sprang to his mind.

 

They had first gone to the Smuggler's Moon of Nal Hutta nearly three years previously during their mission to stop the Dark Trooper Project.  Captured by Jabba the Hutt and shooting through the overgrown slug's private space yacht certainly did little to get onto his good side.

The only other option was...  The thought sent a slight chill down his spine.  A very dangerous place to be a rebel and also somewhere that the _Crow_ would be recognizable was...  Imperial Center itself.  Coruscant was the soul of the Empire and the site of one of his most hectic missions where he had to decode the navacard that he had retrieved on Nar Shaddaa.

 

It was the option that made the most sense.  He had narrowed it down a planet, at least he hoped he had.  Now to find one woman on a planet containing a trillion beings.  Now in the safety of his own quarters he pulled out the datapad from its pocket in his coat and replied to the aide's original message.  WHERE ON CORUSCANT?

 

YOU STILL HAVE A LOT TO LEARN ABOUT HOW TO ASK QUESTIONS was the reply he received the next morning.

 

***

 

Isard's main office was large even for its contemporaries and opulently decorated.  The normally grey durasteel walls were covered with various tapestries depicting scenes of Imperial glories.  A large holographic map of the galaxy covered the north wall, various hotspots such as Gall, Golrath and the Sepan system were highlighted.

 

Ysanne Isard sat at her desk, the day's reports from various agents stationed in numerous sectors and systems throughout the galaxy all read by subordinates and the more pressing matters forwarded directly to her.  There were traitors at work in the Empire, a crime lord getting delusions of grandeur right under their noses, and a potential infiltration into Imperial Intelligence itself.

 

She watched the feed from the Academy of Interrogation on the flat-screened projector on her darkwood desk.  Daam was instructing his pupils on how to properly interrogate infantry at the moment, telling them what questions to ask to get the proper results.  Daam asked a burly brownish-red haired man about an interrogation technique that no one of the pupil's experience would be able to reasonably answer.  She watched the students as the pupil tried and failed to answer the question.  No one gave any indication of knowing the answer, nor did Isard really expect any of them to.  Any rebel agent, if there actually was one, that was chosen to infiltrate Intelligence would know that they were being probed.  Yet Daam was not doing that bad of a job, she thought.  Especially since she had told him to leave the majority of the investigation to her.

 

She turned to the datapad in front of her and thumbed in a few quick commands.  The burly student was Newo Tenes, a Coruscanti with two years of service to Imperial Intelligence.  A graduate of the Imperial military academy of Raithal with high marks and an Intel occupation test grading.  His background checked out as well.

 

She had been through the roster a dozen times already and had failed to find out what exactly had made her so suspicious when she had read through it the first time.  Every single applicant had proper credentials and a background that checked out, so it was strange to her that...  Isard froze in her chair, the faintest hint of a smile curving on her lips.  It was _Strange_...  The faint memories of an Imperial Intelligence agent under that name slowly floated their way to the surface of her mind.  She exited the menu she was on and pulled up the records from the vast archives at her disposal, searching for the name that had come to mind.  She input the last name into the database and soon the record appeared. 

 

A tan-skinned woman in her early-twenties appeared on the screen, long black hair pulled into a tail that fell to her mid back.  Jan Strange had served in Imperial Intelligence as an agent for nearly two years and had a certain knack for capturing rebels.  Isard looked back at the screen showing the classroom and viewed the woman fitting the description closely typing notes into her own datapad.  "Shalmohar," Isard said.


	7. Chapter Six

**CHAPTER SIX**  
  
Ysanne Isard's holographic head loomed large in Leco Daam's office. The shading of the large windows overlooking the cityscape beyond was on, leaving the large hologram to illuminate the room in a bright blue glow. "You're certain?" Leco Daam said. The administrator was sitting at his desk, a datapad in hand.  
  
Isard nodded. "Most of the records of Jan Strange were destroyed years ago, before I assumed control of this office. More than likely she did it herself before she returned to the Rebels. The Empire is lucky that I am more meticulous in backups than my father was. Even then, I almost missed it."  
  
"Well, then," Daam said. "I'll have my forces go and arrest her immediately."  
  
"No," Isard said. The voice was harsh and quick. "We have to be patient and when it happens it has to be certain. She's here for some reason and she may have backup waiting."  
  
"Well, if she is Strange, then she's here to kill either you or myself. She'd already know the standard interrogation procedure. It hasn't changed much" He paced around his desk before sitting down again, glancing down at the datapad in front of him. The memory of her waiting after an interrogation demonstration chilled his blood. "You mentioned backup, Madam Director?"  
  
"Are you familiar with the Imperial Security Operations fiasco?" Isard asked.  
  
Daam nodded. It had been a little over two years since a lone rebel agent had somehow made their way into the Imperial Security Operations building and used the decryption machine deep in the center of it to crack the code on some datacard that he carried. Over half of the base's security complement of Stormtroopers and Imperial Navy soldiers were killed by the agent. The next morning, after word of the massacre had reached higher echelons, the building's commander was personally "scolded" by Lord Vader. Intel always joked about the assault, half-serious chuckles that such a thing could never happen to them.  
  
"According to the files that I've pulled together, she is a known accomplice to the rebel agent that was responsible for that massacre. Security will have to be increased after her capture."  
  
"I'll let my security team know," Daam said. He flashed a cocky smile at Isard, confident that their department's boasts would prove true.  
  
"You'll need more," Director Isard said. "I'll be sending in an extra platoon and a few squads of stormtroopers after you capture her, just in case her partner is in the area. Come up with a plan and let me know about it before the end of the day." The holoprojector cut out as she ended the call, and the shade on the windows retracted back into the wall. The midday sun shone into the office.  
  
Daam stood up from his desk and paced throughout the office. A rebel spy in their midst. He had first entertained the thought when Isard had found something suspicious in his class a week previously, but to hear the validation was a triumph. He grinned heavily and poured a glass of Corellian brandy from the bar on the opposite wall from the window. He took a sip and relished the slight burning of the alcohol on his throat. He opened the comm channel to his security personnel and sat his drink back down onto the bar. An idea was already forming inside of his mind.  
  
Fifteen minutes later, eighteen Imperial Stormtroopers stood inside of Leco Daam's office. They were dressed in finely crafted and polished plastoid armor, the lights of the office reflecting off of the white plates.  
  
"We have a rebel in our midst," he said. "Leessa Shalmohar. Director Isard and I are coming up with a plan to take her into custody with a minimal risk of casualties. We have no idea of her capabilities or contingency plans, so she'll have to be taken by surprise. You'll be ready to report to me at a moment's notice when we're ready for us to proceed."  
  
"Yes, sir!" they said in unison.  
  
"I'm confident in each of your abilities, men, and I know that you'll be able to get the job done. Dismissed."  
  
Leco turned his attention away from his troops as they walked out of his office and sat back down onto his desk. Resting his chin on his fist, he pulled up the schematic of the facility. His mind raced at the idea of what a rebel infiltrator might do if confronted. As spies, any laws of war that the Empire followed were forfeit and that desperation could lead to anything for a group of beings that were already full of surprises.  
  
He zoomed in on the dormitories of his school, a dozen small rooms that surrounded a large common area. The unusually large number of students that he had received this year had led the agent to put two of his pupils in a nearby hotel and transport them via speeder every day. It was unfortunate, he mused, that his target had not been among them. Shalmohar's quarters were right in the middle of the northern wall and he had no intel at all on any defenses that the rebel may have put up. Visions of tripwires at the door with an attached explosive filled his mind along with thoughts of an automated blaster turret meeting his soldiers and tearing them to ribbons.  
  
No, he thought. It couldn't be anything so grandiose or quick. Not when she was at the academy for some reason that remained irritatingly elusive, though there was the previous day... He could make an attempt to capture her in the middle of the night while she slept, but there was no guarantee of her being asleep at the time. Most agents staggered their sleep cycle around when on missions.  
  
He placed that thought in the back of his mind and a turned to other options. Seizing her in the hallways or one of the many classrooms would ensure that she would be lightly armed, if at all, but the potential for collateral damage in the other intelligence agents was great. Leco leaned back against his chair and considered all of his options.  
  
***  
  
The Hope's Retreat was never the busiest bar on the ship. Of the two aboard the _New Hope_ , the majority of the Dreadnaught's crew preferred the service at the Alderaan's Peace. The bar never did lack for customers, however, as patrons kicked out of the other place mingled with those who considered the Peace too crowded or "fancy."  
  
Kyle sat in a corner booth, nursing an Corellian ale and looking at his datapad. The vague hints given to him by Mon Mothma's aide had led him to the only obvious conclusion: the Imperial School of Torturers. Knots formed in his stomach at the thought of returning to Coruscant, twisting and turning in tandem with the alcohol. Jan was alone there, and in danger, and that thought eased any nerves that he had. She'd do the exact same for him, he knew, and the last cramps in his guts ceased.  
  
HoloNet imagery of that area of Coruscant was highly classified by the Empire and unavailable via the standard planetary map channels used by the public. Alliance Intelligence had made due with what they could, taking sensor readings during illicit runs through the restricted airspace and hacking into the planet's satellites to give them the reconnaissance that they needed. It was one of these maps that he was studying now, viewing the open areas next to the building for landing zones for the _Crow_.  
  
The _Moldy Crow_ was the reason he was sitting in the Retreat. Getting into the building and rescuing Jan was one thing, but it would all be for nothing if they didn't have a safe way off planet.   
  
A young man with a youthful face entered the bar, clad in the orange flight suit of an X-wing pilot. The pilot spotted Kyle with a nod and headed in his direction.  
  
"You must be Kyle," he said. "You wanted to speak to me?"  
  
"Have a seat, Lt. Datch." Kyle motioned to the empty space across the table. "I have a certain mission proposition for you."  
  
Tarrin Datch took his seat and ordered a Duro drink as the droid waiter approached him. "Special ops? That's surprising."  
  
"From what I've heard, you can pilot a freighter just as well as you can a starfighter."  
  
Datch took a sip of his drink. "I did all right on Hoth, but there wasn't that much Imperial resistance off planet by the time I lifted off."  
  
Kyle shook his head. "I didn't mean on Hoth, I'm talking about above Duros with that rebel that was stashed aboard."  
  
Tarrin's face lit up with recognition. "Not a lot of people here know about that."  
  
"Well, she's in trouble again and I'm going to get her out of it." Jan's disastrous mission to Oulanne and her subsequent injury and illness was told to him shortly after his trips into the sewers of Anoat. He didn't believe that any mission could have been worse than having to swim through a river of sewage, but she had bested him on that.   
  
"I can't do it without a pilot. From what she told me, you're the one that's going to be able to pull it off."  
  
Tarrin's brown eyes narrowed slightly. "Just how bad is this trouble?"  
  
Kyle gave a quick shrug. It wouldn't do him any favors to lie to the pilot any more than what he'd already planned on doing. "She was on a mission in Imperial Intelligence and there's reason to believe that her cover was blown."  
  
A flash of worry crossed over the younger man's face. "And she's still alive?"  
  
He didn't know the answer for that question. He didn't even know that she was truly in danger save for the fact that every single neuron in his brain screamed that somehow she was. "She's a spy, they want to get every single thing that they can from her. She's already in a school for interrogation."  
  
"TheSchoolofTorturers?" Tarrin shivered and took a long drink from his brandy. "Who else is on the team?"  
  
"I work alone."   
  
"Even for this?"  
  
"Especially for this," Kyle said. "Too many people would bring half the Imperial Army onto us, and that won't be good."  
  
"Jan Ors got me into this Rebellion," Tarrin said. "I met a lot of good friends here while I would have still been working for my parents on our space station. I'm in."  
  
Kyle drained the last bit of ale in his glass. "Good. There's still a few things that I'll have to do. Request leave if you have it and I'll keep in touch." He stood from his seat.  
  
"Leave? If I'm being reassigned why do I need to take leave?"  
  
Kyle scrambled for a quick comeback. "Look, these kinds of missions..."  
  
Tarrin frowned and shook his head. The pilot lowered his voice. "Aren't exactly authorized, are they?"  
  
"No." Kyle sat back down, shoulders slumped slightly.  
  
Tarrin Datch chuckled. "No one would risk their career for this?"  
  
"You're the first person I asked. I needed a good pilot who might help and I remembered your name coming up."  
  
  
Tarrin stared into his glass for nearly a minute before quickly shrugging some unvocalized thought off of his shoulders. He extended his hand toward the agent. "Force help me if I'm making a big mistake, but I'm still in."


	8. Chapter Seven

** CHAPTER SEVEN **

 

The sun of Coruscant beat down through the transparisteel walkway, sending large beams of light between the opaque supports.  The transparent substance amplified the heat in a way that no climate control system could ever truly compensate for, causing the lone occupant laying prone on the floor to wipe a bead of sweat off of her brow.

 

Jan Ors raised her macrobinoculars to her eyes again, the open walkway five meters below and over 500 meters away shown up close.  Past that half kilometer, the open walkway below curved around the corner of the right wing of a building and disappeared from sight.

 

Around the corner her target emerged.  Leco Daam was out of his standard Imperial uniform and dressed now in simple grey workout gear, the Imperial emblem emblazoned across his chest.  "Perfect target," Jan whispered to herself.

 

The instructor jogged down the street, the same way that he had done every other day for the past week, the macrobinoculars automatically adjusting the focus. 

 

No, she thought as she zoomed out slightly.  Not the same way.  She had spent over an hour combined on this forgotten walkway, watching for any vulnerability and routine, and Daam was always accompanied by two stormtroopers as a personal guard.  Today he was flanked by four.  She bit her lower lip, a nervous habit that she had always had difficulty in breaking, and lowered the device in her hand to the floor.  Shifting to a sitting position, she pulled a secure comlink out of her pocket.  She checked the device's encryption setting and dialed in one of the five pre-set frequencies.

 

"This is Outsider to Trip Home."

 

A brief bit of silence on the other end before a male voice answered.  "Trip Home acknowledges, Outsider.  What can we do for you?"

 

Coruscant had many rebel cells hidden in various levels throughout the planet-city, each one of them with their own various uses and relationships with the main Alliance.  Trip Home was the closest to her location and moderately placed.

 

"Trip Home, I'm going to need a sniper rifle for this job.  DC-15X if you have it, E-17d if you don't."  The two large rifles were the most familiar to her.  She was never the best sniper, but it was one of the easiest ways to deal with a troublesome Imperial if you could find a suitable nest.  It was an even better way to eliminate a target if the assassin had reasonable evidence that they were on to them.

 

Her contact asked for a drop location for the rifle and she gave him an abandoned building near her current location.  Long ago it had been part of the Old Republic Intelligence, but the recent construction in the area had long ago left it vacant.

 

The sun was beginning to set when she returned to her quarters.  The rooms provided for the prospective Intelligence interrogators weren't luxurious but were moderately spacious.  A small refresher with a hybrid sonic and water shower was to the immediate right of the main entrance, offset from the five by four meter main chamber.  She walked quickly to the closet next to the small bed and removed the large crate from its resting place at the back of the storage space.

 

She opened the crate and it's hidden compartment.  The arsenal of weaponry and tools that she had put together before leaving the _New Hope_ lay just where they were after her initial inspection of them on the transport ride to Coruscant.  She glanced at the door before returning.

 

The BlasTech made holdout blasters were the first to be removed from the crate, followed by a roll of chameleon mesh tape.  She walked quickly into the refresher and kneeled next to the sink.  She tore off several long strips of the tape and secured the two pistols to the bottom of the metallic basin and then returned to her cache.  The larger blaster pistol that she had brought with her remained within reach of her bed, its status as the standard Imperial sidearm allowing it to be in plain sight.

 

The electrogarrote was the next item out of the crate.  She pulled the two ends apart, exposing the entire 60 centimeters of thin durasteel wire and pulling it taut.  She looked at the door again and back to the wire.  It wasn't enough to cover the entire meter-long door, but in the right place and secured properly, it just might be enough.

 

She sat down in the dark gray chair, the metallic fingers on her right hand resting next to the blaster pistol on the stand, electric sensors in the fingertips providing a modicum of tactile sensation.  Her mind screamed at her to grab her scrambled comlink and tell Trip Home that she had possibly been uncovered and to prepare her a trip back to Alliance territory. 

 

The rational part of her brain cut in, warning her against the natural sentient fight or flight reaction.  If Leco was alarmed by something or alerted to an intruder in the school, the trail may not lead to her.  If it did, it may take the methodical Imperial at least a week to uncover all of the traces that it was actually her.  He didn't have a week, only two days at the very most.  She looked around her quarters and analyzed the tactical options just in case. 

 

Satisfied that she was a safe as she could be, she leaned back in her chair and consulted her datapad.  There, studying the maps of the area that were accessible to an Imperial Intelligence agent like Leessa Shalmohar, Jan Ors plotted her escape from her sniper's nest.

 

***

 

The night sky of Coruscant was an inkblot outside of the window of Leco Daam's office.  The multitude of surrounding buildings glittered like the jewel that gave the planet its name, tangerine-colored lights drowning out the stars above. 

 

The officer stood in front of that window, gazing out into the cityscape.  Nearly two decades of his life had passed before he had seen a city even a thousandth of this size, only oceans and small sandy archipelagos  as far as his eyes could see.  His field of vision was filled now with incandescent buildings, speeders and the red warning lights of low hanging skyhooks.

 

It was order out in the night.  The buildings arranged in their own specific way, the skylanes running just so.  It was order that he had joined the Empire for, to keep the galaxy safe from the corruption that had doomed the Republic.  The rebels were a cancer within that order, working under the sight of those that would bring peace to galaxy in defense of a status quo that had ceased to work a millennium ago.

 

That cancer was now in his school.  He had been teaching her everything that he knew about Imperial interrogation techniques while she soaked the information up and waited for the opportunity to kill Director Isard, him, or even both.  After she was done with her task she'd return to her treasonous friends and let them know how to withstand interrogation and go on to kill even more innocents.

 

"Do you understand how difficult it is to have this job?"

 

The security guard in the room shook his head, the gesture seen through the reflection of Leco's office in the window.  "No, sir."

 

Vanet was a young Stormtrooper officer, recently out of the Academy.  He held his white helmet under his arm, a black body glove pulled over his head, leaving only his face visible.  Most importantly, Vanet was his man, not Isard's.

 

"There are a dozen people here, some of the best that Imperial Intelligence has, and one Rebel who will get very, very desperate to stay alive."

 

"We've already sequestered Newo from his quarters, sir.  Do you want us to abort the mission?"

 

Leco looked past his widened eyes and slightly open mouth into the city.  "No," he said.  He checked the chrono on his wrist, 0123.  "Have your troops start the attack."

 

Vanet placed his helmet in both of his hands and slipped it over his head.  A quick salute followed. "Yes, sir!" 

 

The filtered voice's reverberations faded along with the lieutenant's footsteps, leaving Leco alone in the room once more.  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before slowly letting it out, waiting for the news of the attack's success or failure to reach him.


	9. Chapter Eight

** CHAPTER EIGHT **

 

The repulsorsled issued a low hum as it glided over the floor of the _New Hope_.  On the flat bed of the hovering craft was a thin crate nearly a meter and a half long.  Kyle Katarn pushed it through the busy hangar, watching as the technicians and other members of the deck crew moved to avoid him.

 

"What's in the crate?" Tarrin Datch said.  Kyle rounded a _Barloz_ freighter and came into view of his ship.

 

"Something I'd rather have and not need than need and not have."  He engaged the sled's air brakes and opened the ramp of the freighter for them both.

  
The ramp led to a small airlock with two hatches to the stern and bow of the craft.  Kyle pointed to the room behind them.  "Quick tour: hyperdrive and cargo bay are through there.  If you go in, do _not_ touch anything in the armory."

 

"I hope I don't have to," the pilot said.

 

"Good."  Kyle left the sled in the airlock and walked through the bow door.  It opened into a three meter wide corridor that took up around half of the ship's length.  He pointed out the ship's refresher, and the food and water conservator.

 

Near the door leading to the cockpit of the ship were two bunks set into the bulkhead, an overhead compartment over each of them.  He pointed to the starboard cot.  "That one's Jan's, you can use it for now."

 

Tarrin placed his own bag on the cot.  His head tilted slightly and mouth furling slightly downward.  "What happens when she's back on board?"

 

Kyle shrugged.  "I don't know, I didn't really think that through."  He paused and opened up the storage compartment above his own bunk.  "We've got plenty of extra blankets and the chairs in the cockpit aren't that uncomfortable."

 

"Thanks..."

 

Kyle ignored the pilot's complaint and passed through the door to the cockpit.  The large, narrow control center had two command consoles behind each other, the rear station offset from the front.

 

A discarded pair of pilot's goggles were draped across the headrest of the stern seat.  Large and with polarized optics that made the lenses nearly pitch black, they were exactly where Jan had left them after their last mission.

 

He took his usual seat at the front of the craft and began the process of starting the engines.  "Anything I can do?" Tarrin asked as he sat in the remaining seat.

 

"Transfer gravity and life support from the _Hope_ to us and disengage the docking clamp.

 

The young pilot studied the controls in front of him for a few seconds before getting to work.  Miniscule air vents in the ship came to life with a barely audible hum.  Too audible.

 

"Run a quick diagnostic on the air filters," Kyle said.  His mouth tightened into a line.  Now was a hell of a time for something on the _Crow_ to break down. 

 

A few minutes passed as the computer on board went through their search for any problems.  "It says they're running at 98.3% efficiency," Tarrin reported.  Nearly a quarter of a percent higher than what they normally ran.

 

Kyle put the thought in the back of his mind and finished the tasks left to do on the preflight checklist.  The newness of it was the problem, he thought.  In his almost four years working with the Alliance, he had either been alone on missions or with Jan.  Another pilot, necessary as he may be, chafed at him.

 

The _Moldy Crow_ lifted off of the hangar deck of the _New Hope_ minutes later, beginning its journey to Coruscant.

 

***

 

The chrono on her stand read 0130, yet sleep was the furthest thing from Jan Ors' mind at the moment.  The agent had begun to stagger her sleep cycles once again, sleeping for a few hours before waking.  The extra security that Leco Daam had the previous afternoon had led her to step up on her own safety.

 

She sat in the room's only chair, eyes on the datapad she held in one hand.  The print version of Coruscant's daily news was always boring, both the local and galactic news filled with whatever the Empire wanted its citizens to know.  That's where the Alliance came in, taking a cue from the old Separatist HoloNet Shadowfeeds, they had set up comm centers throughout the galaxy, mostly on asteroids near large inhabited systems.

 

There was no news to be had on the HoloNet, however.  Coruscant had long been deemed as far too dangerous to even try to set up a comm center near.  The local Rebel cells made due with leaflets printed on flimsiplast.

 

Still, even obvious Imperial propaganda was better than nothing, Jan thought.  Months after the battle, the Empire was still reveling about their great victory on Hoth and how the Rebel's terroristic threat was soon to be squashed.  It would have been funny if too many of her comrades hadn't been killed.

 

A sound from the room next to her reached her ears through the thin metal walls separating the two.  Jan dropped the datapad onto her lap and listened closely, hand instinctively reaching for the blaster pistol on the night stand next to her.  The unmistakable sound of a door hissing opened followed.

 

The agent sprang into action, grabbing her blaster pistol and standing up quickly.  Her discarded datapad hit the floor with a small thud.  She crossed the miniscule distance between her chair and the refresher station in seconds and dropped quickly to her knees in front of the sink.  Her hand reached under the metal basin and found one of the two holdout blasters that she had placed just hours before.  The pistol came free with a quick tug.

 

She kneeled in front of the shower station, kneeling with one knee on the ground.  She held her two blasters in front of her room's door, hands steady.  Her breaths were even, drawing in through her nose and then out through her slightly open mouth. 

 

The door out into the hallway hissed open and a she caught sight of a object being tossed into the main chamber.  A second passed before a brilliant flash of light erupted through the open door, followed closely by a deafening sound that shook the walls.

 

"Move in!"  The filtered voice was muffled through her ringing ears.  The first stormtrooper rushed into the room, blaster raised and instantly caught the secured electrogarrote with his foot.  With a startled cry, the vanguard of the Imperial attack stumbled to the carpeted floor.

 

Jan quickly aimed and squeezed off a shot at fallen stormtrooper, hitting the man in the chest.  Another followed, stepping over the impromptu tripwire and his dying companion.  His rifle was halfway towards her when the agent's next shot impacted on his stomach.

 

The injured Imperial fired off a random shot of blaster fire as he collapsed to his knees, the blue ring dissipating on the ceiling of the refresher.  The thought that they were using stun settings hit her brain and caused her aim to waver only slightly as she fired a killing shot at the soldier in front of her.

 

She spun into the open shower stall, dodging another stun blast as a third stormtrooper entered the room.  A few blind shots around the wall was meant to keep the Imperial at bay.  The shuffling sounds of plasteel boots on the floor outside of the refresher increased as more stormtroopers made their way.  The room was too small, too crowded to provide any real form of defense.  Her capture was imminent.

 

Jan leaned out of the shower and fired a burst of quick shots at her enemies.  They'd capture her, but she'd take out as many of them as she could.  Ducking back into her cover, she quickly checked the charge on her blaster pistols.

 

"Clear!"  The unfiltered voice of the Imperial soldier was followed by the clang of a metallic object as it hit the floor next to her.  It was a flat hexagonal panel attached to a handle.  The lines running from the center to the angles of the panel pulsed slightly.

 

A burst of light brighter than any sun that Jan had seen throughout her years of travelling the stars was followed by a loud explosion of sound.  Her knees hit the shower's floor as her legs collapsed out from under her.  Trickles of blood from her ears dropped warmly down her cheeks as she blindly crawled around looking for her dropped blasters.

 

Another spike of pain slammed into her gut, the kick driving the air from her lungs.  Through the burning tears of her clearing eyes she spied the stormtrooper officer standing over her.  He pointed his blaster carbine towards her and squeezed the trigger.  A blue ring flashed in front of her, followed only by darkness.


	10. Chapter Nine

** CHAPTER NINE **

****

The holographic image of a young woman crouched in a defensive position played in the air above the holoemitter.  Ysanne Isard watched the woman fire a shot, the blaster bolt coming at the helmet cam in slow motion before abruptly ending, replaced by the feed from another stormtrooper.

 

Three dead stormtroopers and two more wounded to capture one woman.  Her heterochromatic eyes burned and froze at the image on her holoscreen.  Three dead to capture one woman that was surrounded by Imperials in the first place.

 

"How could you have done this better?" 

 

The holographic image of Leco stood still and quiet.  Isard stormed closer to the projector.

 

"You've had four hours to think of something!  Tell me!"  The agent at the other end shrank slightly at her words.

 

The lump in Daam's throat rose slightly as he swallowed.  "I made the decision to approach at night, while Ors was likely sleeping, in order to minimize the risk of casualties and collateral damage.  She was aware of us."

                               

Isard looked down upon her errant pupil.  "And how was she aware?"

 

"I'm not sure," Daam said.

 

"Don't give me that!"  Isard's voice was as frozen as her eye.  "I'm warning you and that is far more than some of the agents that have failed me have gotten.  Don't make me realize that I've wasted my time with you for these past few years."

 

Leco Daam lowered his eyes slightly before raising them to meet hers.  "I added extra security for myself when I was running.  She must have been watching."

 

A faint smile curved its way onto Isard's lips.  "Your own paranoia cost you the lives of three men and taken two more out of commission for at least two weeks.  Was that a fair trade for the extra protection you had?"

 

"No, Madam Director."

 

"You think like an intelligence agent at the times you should think like a general.  The Emperor is heirless and old and I need people who can think like both when the time comes.  Every half-brained officer with a Star Destroyer will make their own bids for the throne and I intend to beat them all for it.  Do I make myself clear?"

 

Leco stood as straight as he could and gave a confident nod.  "Perfectly, Director Isard."

 

"Good."  She stood from her chair, the floating holocam following her every move.  "Get what you can from her and then send her to me."  The conversation ended and she walked over to the large viewport that looked out over the Coruscanti skyline.  The spires of the Imperial Palace rose large in the distance.  Isard stared at the building and all it represented: an entire galaxy united under the order of a single being.  Some day it would be hers. 

 

She walked back to her desk, covered with datapads and reports from thousands of agents throughout the galaxy.  Walked past the diagnostic screen on the wall showing the status of every system on board the 19 kilometer long Super Star Destroyer that was _Lusankya_ , the most feared prison camp in the Empire.

 

***

 

The alarm blasted it's shrill shriek with the ferocity of a Nexu that jolted Jan Ors out of what brief nap that she had been able to get.  She waved her hand above her head, setting the alarm's motion detector off and killing the sound. 

 

She stood up from the metal cot that she had been sitting on and stretched her legs.  She had awakened from the stun grenade she had found herself in this 3 meter by 3 meter room, still wearing her Imperial uniform but everything other than the cloth tunic and pants were gone: her belt, rank insignia, code cylinders and even her hair tie.  Anything that may have helped her take her own life in captivity had been stripped from her.

 

She walked from one side of the room, taking only two steps to reach the durasteel wall that held a primitive combination of a refresher and a sink before turning back and walking to bare wall.  At the intersection of the wall and the metal door were five empty tubes of nutrient paste that was her only clue as to how long she had been in her cell. 

 

Five days or one and a half?  For one of her only clues, they meant next to nothing.  In addition to the sleep deprivation they had to have been staggering her feeding times to keep her disoriented.  All of it was standard Imperial tactics for softening up a prisoner for interrogation. 

 

She sat down on the cot and rested her head on her hands, the wish that she could just shut her eyes and be able to really rest at the edge of her mind.  At the other end of the cell, the empty food tubes blurred before returning to focus.

 

With a hiss that jolted her out of her thoughts, the door to the cell opened and a single stormtrooper walked into the room with his blaster drawn.  Outside of the door she could see another standing a meter away from the entrance.  "Get up!"  The Imperial motioned towards her with his blaster.

 

Jan took a deep breath to calm her nerves the best that she could before standing up, steeling herself the best she could for what was to come.

 

"Let's go, keep moving."

 

The two stormtroopers flanked her as she walked along the corridors of the academy's detention center.  The dark walls with red lighting gradually changed their tone to grey as they passed through doorway after doorway.  Jan turned her head slightly as they passed a corridor, looking for any sense of bearings in the labyrinthine hallways.

 

"Eyes front."  She felt the rough shove of the side of a blaster rifle hit her in the back and sent her stumbling forward before catching herself.  She followed the stormtrooper in front, eyes moving around the area to survey the area as best that she could.

 

She was led through several corners and doors, each one just as unfamiliar as the other one.    Entrances to unknown rooms passed by before a familiar sight finally reached her eyes: the red-lit hallways of the detention cells up ahead before she was led down the path to her right. 

 

She was led through several other hallways, each of them slightly familiar as her captors attempted to disorient her, before stopping at a very recognizable door: the interrogation room.  The lead Imperial opened the door, revealing a room just slightly larger than her prison cell.  A metal chair was secured tightly to the floor, restraints on the arms and legs, next to a durasteel table.  A large mirror spanned the entire width of the wall and half of its height.

 

"Sit in there."  Jan took her seat and stared into the mirror, imagining that she could look past it and into the observation room beyond it.  Leco Daam was certainly in there, watching as his soldiers restrained her to the chair.

 

***

 

It was her eyes that unnerved him.  The thought invaded his mind even as her brown eyes seemingly stared straight into his soul.  It was impossible, of course, for her to actually see him.  The highly polished transparisteel was reflective on the other side and the rebel agent was merely staring at herself.

 

Leco Daam tightened his jaw and turned to the three students in the room with him.  Cedral, Newo Tenes and Donlat Tascel were some of his better students, each one with promising careers ahead of them.

 

"I want you to pay attention to this," he said.  "She will be a tough person to crack.  She's had Imperial Intelligence training before coming here, as well as whatever training the Rebels have on their own."

 

"How should we approach them?"  Newo crossed his arms over his thick chest and looked into the room.  "Standard methods wouldn't apply."  His lips moved downward into a slight frown.  "Would they?"

 

"Actually, just the opposite.  We exploit what they know because they know it.  They have our techniques down so they expect what's to come and most of them fear it."

 

"She doesn't look scared," Donlat said in his high voice.  The young man from Giehl had an unnerved look upon his face, not used to having to view the interrogation process.

 

"She will be."  Leco walked the few steps to the door and opened it, the light from the hall pouring into the dark room.  "Sooner or later, everyone here cracks."


	11. Chapter Ten

** CHAPTER TEN **

****

It was an old spacer's tale that to stare directly into the blue tunnel of Hyperspace would drive the viewer mad.  Beings weren't meant to view such a thing and it drove the mind astray.  Kyle had never believed those stories.

 

He sat in his chair aboard the _Moldy Crow_ , feet propped up on top of his locked out command console and face turned up towards the clear transparisteel panels on the canopy of the cockpit.  The blue ribbon above him undulated with brilliant white light that shimmered through the cabin like the sun reflecting off of a river.

 

There had been an artificial river near his childhood home, part of an irrigation system that carried water from a reservoir kilometers away through several of the moon's farms before ending in the capital of Baron's Hed.  He and the children of the other local farmers used to play by the river, despite their parents' protests.  He had fallen in once, when it was just him and his father's droid.  While he was sputtering and struggling against the fast current, the usk-shaped droid reacted fast enough to save him.

 

WeeGee was likely disabled now, killed with his father along with how many of those childhood friends.  The friends that he had met at the academy had fared no better.  His defection to the Rebellion had cost him his friendship with Meck Odom, another young Imperial officer that Kyle had convinced to help him during the mission to Danuta.  While Meck had complied, he had made it quite clear that he never wanted to see Kyle again.  Another one of his academy friends was killed during his defection aboard a luxury liner, life ending along with his parents as a captured protocol droid exploded aboard their yacht.

 

People aboard the _New Hope_ and even in the commando unit that he had briefly been a part of had wondered why he was such a loner, preferring to take on missions alone or with Jan only.  If they had the bad luck that he had with friends, they'd certainly understand.  Now even she was close to meeting the fate that so many of his other friends had met.

 

The door to the cockpit opened, banishing all thoughts save for the present from his mind.  Tarrin Datch walked through the opening and took a seat in the other chair.  The pilot had a somewhat exhausted look on his face.  "How far are we from the next waypoint?"  Each Hyperspace jump had to be calculated from a series of waypoints, the best and most stable routes through the constantly shifting stars and space debris had grown throughout the millennia into trade routes that the majority of spacers used.

 

Kyle removed his feet from the console and unlocked it.  "Two hours from Brentaal and then a quick hop onto the Perlemian to Coruscant.  Then it's go-time."

 

"You're going to head right there?"  The fear in Datch's voice was evident no matter how much the young pilot had tried to hide it.

 

"No," Kyle said.  "You are going to get as close as you legally can to the building, though.  I doubt we'll be able to get a complete scan of it, but I want to see it for myself before I do anything."

 

"How much time do you think we have to rescue her?"

 

Kyle turned around in his chair and pretended to check the console.  "I don't know," he finally said.  He knew that she was a trained intelligence agent, and was very likely trained to withstand torture if she was captured, but all of the training in the galaxy went out the viewport once reality set in.

 

"It's been four days since you brought me into this.  How long before that were you contacted?"  There was a pause in the young man's voice and silence fell over the cockpit of the freighter.  "How did she get a hold of you that she was in danger?"

 

Brief silence was Tarrin's only answer.  "You have to kidding me..."

 

The front seat swiveled around as Kyle turned to face the pilot.  "I'm sorry."

 

Any other words that the rebel agent wanted to say were drowned out by Tarrin.  "You don't know!  By the Force, you don't even know..."  The pilot buried his head in his hands.

 

"I'll drop you off on Brentaal when we get there.  You can find a trip back to a rebel-held planet easily."

 

Brown eyes smoldered like embers.  Tarrin pointed in ineffectual finger towards Kyle.  "That's not good enough!  You said it was unauthorized and I was fine with that risk, but now you say that you _don't even know_ that Jan's in danger?"  The anger faded in his eyes and the pilot's face went slack, chin dropping nearly to his chest.  "I risked my career for this..."  His mouth opened and tried to form more words, a few stammers the only result.  "I'm _losing_ my career for this..."

 

Kyle opened his mouth as if to say more, but turned around and faced the front of his ship.  There weren't any words in the galaxy to console the pilot behind him.  He looked at the console: still two hours left until Brentaal.  He'd have to find a half-way decent piloting droid for the credits that he had and what parts of his armory he felt that he could spare to lose. 

 

"How did you know that she's in danger?"  Tarrin's paltry voice barely audible.

 

"I don't."

 

There was a slight scoff from behind Kyle.  "I've been in Rogue Squadron and I've known some pretty reckless beings, but none of them would go all the way to Coruscant unless they were sure of something."

 

"It's just a feeling that I have."

 

"What kind of feeling?"  The look in Tarrin's eyes reminded him of Mon Mothma's aide; curiosity mixed with a hint of knowing.

 

A laugh escaped from Kyle's lips, hollow and self-deprecating.  "You're the third person to ask me that in a week," he said.

 

"And?"

 

"Look, I don't really like talking about it..."

 

"It's strong enough to not only risk your career with the Alliance for it, but others, too...  That sounds a lot like someone I know..."

 

Kyle shook his head in disbelief.  First Mon Mothma's aide and now Tarrin Datch.  "And now you're the _second_ person to tell me that in a week."

 

"You've seen it happen, or the feeling that it would happen."  The pilot continued.  "In your mind."

 

"Look, I've already had this conversation before, so can you hurry to the point?"  A look over his shoulder let Kyle see the serious look on the pilot's face.

 

"That was it, wasn't it?"  Tarrin nodded his head either in a nervous tic or fully making up his own mind.  "I'm still in." 

 

"Are you sure?"

 

"I've seen Commander Skywalker have so many of those 'gut feelings' to know to trust them.  You're no Skywalker, but you believe that feeling like he does.  One condition, though."

 

"That is?"  Kyle's voice was suspicious.  As much as he needed the help of the human pilot, the word "no" was already forming in his throat.

 

"We contact the local rebel cells.  If Jan was in any danger, she might have tried to place a warning to them."

 

Kyle mulled the thought over.  Whatever her mission was, she might have coordinated things with the local cells before she moved.  She always did.  On their last mission to Coruscant, she had him memorize the current location of half a dozen rebel cells on the planet and how best to contact them.

 

"It's a deal."

 

Tarrin breathed a sigh of relief.  "Good.  If you get her out of there and you both make it out alive, you two better put in a few good words for me..."

 

A small laugh that never escaped the agent's throat was Kyle's only reaction to Tarrin's request.  He had planned from the beginning to lie to the Mon Mothma--again--and say that Datch believed that he was acting in an official capacity to special ops.  Whether it worked or not would be an entirely different matter.

 

***

 

The prisoner in front of him sat remarkably alert for haven't slept more than an hour at a time for the past three days.  The skin under her eyes had the telltale puffiness of sleep deprivation but they still burned in silent rage towards them.  Leco Daam had been unnerved just seeing those eyes staring in his general direction from behind the one-way reflective transparisteel, but seeing them looking directly at him was entirely different.  The anger behind them, cool and calculated yet barely restrained, could nearly be felt.

 

"Lieutenant Shalmohar, Captain Strange, Commander Ecclin, Captain Ors."  Daam placed the thin datapad containing the files of each of his prisoner's aliases down upon the table as punctuation for each one of them said.  "You've got quite the collection of identities, captain, and these are just the ones that we've been able to find."

 

Jan Ors did nothing but continue to stare at him, a caged animal that would pounce if given the opportunity.  Leco pulled the chair opposite from her away from the table and took a seat.  Clasping his palms together and resting his bearded chin upon his thumbs, he studied her in silence.  He allowed her to stew internally for a minute before he finally placed his hands on the table.

 

"You covered your tracks very well, captain," Daam said.  "Most rebels who have infiltrated Imperial Intelligence weren't as careful as you were."  He cleared the datapads away from the center of the table with the swipe of an arm.  They clanged violently onto the metal floor of the room.

 

"I didn't get where I am by being sloppy."  The Kuati accent that had been perfect down to the inflections on the correct syllables was gone now, replaced by an accent from the late Aldera region of Alderaan.  Each and every word that she said dripped with venom.

 

A grin appeared on Leco's face, curling wide and open.  "Captain, you're here because you _did_ get sloppy."  He gestured towards the datapads at the side of the table.  "You covered your tracks, sure, but not well enough to escape the Director's archives.  Whatever your mission was, you waited too long to do it."

 

"You're lucky you didn't wait another day..."

 

Leco's face sank almost invisibly.  "Yes, we found the rifle in a nearby building.  Right next to a walkway overlooking where I run.  A sniper rifle."  He nearly laughed at the thought.  "Not the best way to go about it."

 

The captured rebel agent remained stoic and silent despite the insult.  Leco stood up and paced around his half of the room, the boot steps echoing off of the durasteel walls.  "Let's skip the bantha fodder and get right to it."  He stopped and motioned towards the mirrored wall behind him.  "You've been behind that wall and you've watched me interrogate a prisoner.  You know exactly what's going to happen here, already."  He leaned across the table at her.  "Here's your chance to avoid it all.  The sleep deprivation, the interrogation droid, all of it."

 

His tone turned sweet, almost fatherly.  "All you have to do is to tell us a few things: what other agents are infiltrating the Empire, what you were doing here precisely, and the location of the Rebel fleet."

 

"Go to hell."

 

It wouldn't be easy.  That was a fact that Leco knew from the beginning but he had to offer her that out.  She had refused and now what was coming her way was completely on her hands.

 

"You're quite defiant for your position.  We know of your partnership with the rebel responsible for the ISB massacre and you're no doubt hoping for some rescue."  He studied her face, hoping for any discernable clue and returned disappointed.  "My facility here is very secure, believe me."

 

An almost feral grin appeared on his prisoner's face.  "It's not him that you have to worry about.  You better hope that if Kyle does come for me, you meet him before I get you..."

 

A chuckle escaped from Leco's lips.  "You're not in any position to make threats, captain."  He gestured towards the window.  The sealed door opened and Donlat entered the room, carrying with him one of the storage crates that had been found in her quarters.  "Speaking of..."

 

Donlat sat the crate down on the table, well away from their prisoner despite her restraints.  "You wanted this now, Commander?"  The well dressed intelligence agent moved back towards the wall and stood there.  He fidgeted where he stood, eyes halfway down to the floor instead of watching.

 

"Yes."  The top lip of the crate opened easily and was set aside next to the table.  "Let's just see what you were up to."

 

Leco removed the three blasters from the crate and placed them on the table.  The energy cells were removed from each of them.  "Three blasters," Leco said.  "One a standard Imperial issue DH-17 blaster pistol and two BlasTech HSB-200 holdouts.  Some very nice blasters, two of which were used to kill three of my stormtroopers." 

 

He put the pistols back in the box and removed the electrogarrote.  "Nifty little thing, and good work on making this into a tripwire.  Inventive."  He placed the device back in the crate and continued his demonstration, removing and replacing the throwing knives and the detonator.

 

"And now, my personal favorite."  He removed the electric toothbrush from the crate and held it up for everyone in the room to see it.  A laugh escaped from his lips as he set the device down.  "Pack something in the wrong place, Captain Ors?" 

 

She made no move that she even recognized the item.  "Forget about it when you found out that we provided toiletries for everyone here?"  He handed the toothbrush over to Donlat.  "Check it."

 

The younger Imperial took the device and opened the side panel.  Leco overlooked the inspection, watching as the thick plasteel covering the power cell was removed, followed by the large cell itself.  "It's a little larger than standard, Commander, and it's been modified to hold the cell, but I don't see anything."  He grabbed a small scanner from his belt and moved it over the brush.  "Scanner doesn't pick anything up.  It's clean."

 

Leco held the power cell up towards the captured rebel.  "Your little group has to make do with what you have it seems."  The flick of a wrist handed it back to his pupil.  "You can keep this.  When you talk, and you will talk, I don't want a repeat of the last prisoner..." 


	12. Chapter Eleven

The spacelanes around Coruscant were backed up to its furthest moon, the multiple lines of freighters, tugs and personal yachts each waiting for their turn to enter the atmosphere of the planet.  In the middle of one of the lines, sandwiched between a flat-topped Lantillian Short Hauler and a herf-shaped BFF-1 bulk freighter, was the _Moldy Crow_.

 

"We've been sitting here for almost an hour..."  Tarrin Datch's voice was filled with boredom.  The pilot sat in the rear seat of the freighter, his hands firmly on the control yoke and throttle.

 

"Enjoy it," Kyle Katarn said.  He looked around the cockpit's viewports as the spacecraft to their side moved a few meters before stopping.  "The ride out of here's going to be a lot more fun."

 

"That's going to be a lot easier said than done."  The younger pilot scanned the area.  "It should still be possible."

 

"We can lose them."  The sensor consoles emitted a series of fast beeps, showing in a neutral yellow the multitudes of civilian ships and freighters the single red shape of an Imperial craft.  Kyle zoomed in on ship and brought up the holographic form of a forked corvette nearly ten times the size of the _Crow_.  On the tips of the two forks were large spotlights.  "We've got a customs corvette coming our way."

 

"Think they'll stop us?"

 

With the punch of a button, the blank hull directly in front of him was filled with a flat holo of the spaceway ahead.  The corvette moved down the row, its spotlights moving from one ship to another.  "It's supposed to be random unless they scan something suspicious onboard."

 

"And there's nothing suspicious about that armory you have back there?"

 

"The first thing that I put in it was the sensor scrambler that Jan gave me.  It shouldn't raise an eyebrow."  One of the spotlights on the corvette shone towards the _Moldy Crow_ , the large viewports instantly polarized as the light hit them.

 

"That's good for the sensors."  The light shined through the cockpit, the dark transparisteel cutting out the majority of the brightness, but still illuminating the cabin.  "What if we're picked?"  His hands gripped the throttle tightly.

 

"Let me worry about that," Kyle said.

 

Tarrin scoffed.  "What are you going to do, talk them nicely into leaving us alone?"

 

Kyle pulled out a number of brightly colored rectangles from his pocket and showed them, five dark faces reflecting the light from outside of the ship.  "No, but Emperor Palpatine will..."

 

"Will that work?"

 

The credits went back into Kyle's pocket.  "A quarter of their monthly paycheck in a day?  Most will take it."

 

Tarrin shook his head.  "We better hope that the captain isn't one of the honest ones, then.  Rare as they are..."

 

The light that had been shining through the viewports vanished off into the distance and the open comm system buzzed.  "Lantillian Hauler _X3S003572_ , please divert from the lane and submit for inspection."

 

"There's that," Kyle said.  As the custom's corvette pulled its latest prey away from the other ships, the traffic began to accelerate towards the planet's surface.

 

 

Coruscant's skylanes were less congested compared to the narrow entry point into the planet's surface.  A kilometer above the roofs of the tallest skytowers the _Moldy Crow_ soared amongst airspeeders and other space-faring ships.  The many spires of the tall Imperial Palace rose nearly a hundred kilometers in the distance.  A chill ran down Kyle's spine as he looked at the capital of the entire Galactic Empire, still large and imposing even from this distance.

 

With a few simple presses on a datapad, the overhead map of the area zoomed out.  "The Academy should be about 50 kilometers from the Imperial Palace to the northwest of here.

 

"Patch it through to my console."  With a quick movements, Kyle sent the coordinates to Tarrin's computer.  To the west, Coruscant's star had began its descent through the large cloudcutters, peeking through the gaps between them.  The lights in the large buildings steadily turned on.

 

"Are you thinking about a night attack?"

 

Kyle looked out the port viewport of his ship at the Imperial Palace as Tarrin passed it.  "Don't have the time tonight and I don't want to wait another day to get this done."

 

Tarrin shrugged as best he could while still piloting the ship.  "That works for me.  You've been here before; did this place give you the creeps the same way it does me?"

 

"Not until I was ready to get out."

 

"I don't want to think about that part right now.  There it is."  The freighter slowed as much as Tarrin dared to avoid raising too much suspicion as he could.  Two kilometers away from the craft was a large blocky building with two globular shield generators on top.  A kilometer to the west of the shielded tower was a simple multi-storied building that stood out amongst the many courtyards and single leveled offices.

 

"There's a landing pad on the roof."  Kyle turned and gestured to Tarrin.  "That's your extraction point."  The agent pointed to another building nearly half a kilometer away, under the skylane.  "And that's where you drop me off."

 

"What do I do if they think that a freighter stopping to land on a random building seems suspicious and sends in a couple of TIEs?"

 

Kyle shrugged.  "You'll only be at a full stop for a few seconds, at most.  There shouldn't be anything to worry about, but if there is state that you had a brief power fluctuation in the starboard engines."

 

"And that'll work?"

 

"Long enough to get out of here."

 

The _Moldy Crow_ had exited the area and was flying around a small entertainment district.  "If that's what I'm going to get, I guess that'll have to do."  The ship banked north towards a seedy looking spaceport.  "Now to keep your end of the promise."

 

"I've still got their numbers programmed into my comlink."

 

***

 

The stormtroopers's hands gripped tightly against her arms sent fire along her limbs as they dragged her through the hallways.  She hung limply in their grasp, mind still foggy from the interrogation drugs that they had pumped into her system in a vain attempt at making her talk.

 

The toes of her boots scraped along familiar floors as they neared the detention cells.  There was no bothering with alternate routes now, not with how out of it the prisoner seemed to be.  The walk from the interrogation room to the detention center took only minutes without the costly detours along the way.

 

The floor rushed towards her as the two guards threw Jan Ors into her cell.  Agony rushed through her body as her sensitive nerves overreacted to the sensation.  The small doses that she had voluntarily subjected herself to while training in Intelligence had prepared her for the droid's toxins, but the reality of the full dose compared lightly to that brief taste.

 

"Here you go, rebel, the Commander wants you not to stink up the room when you do decide to talk."  The stormtrooper's voice was followed by a loud clatter next to her right ear and the always odd sound of laughter filtered through a headset.

 

The door slammed shut behind them and Jan slowly rose to her hands and knees, blocking out the pain as best she could in her mind.  "Step nimbly onto stage.  Croisé into plie of the knee and follow with a..."  Her whispered words faded out and she continued her mother's choreography mentally as she reached the toothbrush on the ground.  A slight smile filled with weariness crossed her face as saw it.  Her hand closed on the device as she moved herself into a seated position along the metal wall.

 

She sat there for minutes, holding onto the toothbrush carefully as she waited for the door to open again and all of it was revealed as some cruel joke upon her.  They hadn't noticed, her brain raced.  Both Daam and Tascel had examined it and hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary save for the slightly oversized power cell.

 

The panel on the toothbrush opened easily, revealing the plasteel cell cap and the inner workings.  The bristled brush head was loosened and twisted off next, the metal clamps inside of the stalk retracted from the thin tab on the end.  She scooted the brush head away from her and turned her attention to the power cell's shield.  It was a simple white rectangle designed to keep the power cell from leaking into the delicate circuit board in case of corrosion. 

 

She held the plate by her burning fingers and pressed down on it, using the floor as leverage.  "Come on..."  The plate snapped in two along the diagonal edge the sound of the cracking plasteel ringing loud in her ears.  Through blurred vision, Jan Ors inspected the straight line of the plate.  It had been designed years ago by some intelligence agent that she couldn't recall the name of, though she felt that she should, as an easily concealed weapon for agents behind Imperial lines.  The end of the wedge fit perfectly into the empty slot where the bristled end of the brush had once been set.  The side panel of the converted weapon was replaced quickly and the agent turned the vibrodagger on. 

 

The blade hummed as the powerful motor inside moved it quicker than the eye could see.  A tired grin crossed her face as she lifted her booted foot up onto her leg.  She slowly brought the vibrodagger down on the corner of the boot's heel and watched as the hard bantha leather was shaved away in a small chip.

 

With the slide down of the normal switch, she turned the dagger off.  The hum ended in an instant as the blade stilled in its housing.  The agent pushed the pain away as she stood up, legs nearly collapsing under her weight.  She leaned against the cool durasteel wall, using it as a crutch to reach her cot.

 

An hour.  That thought was a beacon inside of her mind.  The drugs would clear out of her system in about an hour.  She laid down upon the metal bed, clutching her homemade vibroblade close to her side opposite the door.  An hour before the pain of just breathing ended and a day, maybe a little longer, before the stormtroopers arrived to take her for another interrogation session.  Her eyes closed despite the bright light and immediately opened as the blaring of the motion alarm sounded.


	13. Chapter Twelve

** CHAPTER TWELVE **

 

"How is our prisoner?"

 

Her guest shifted almost unnoticed beside Ysanne Isard as they walked the walls of Lusankya.  Around the two, transparisteel panels along the walls showed row after row of prisoners.

 

"The first session provided the predicted results, Madame Director."  Leco Daam followed each one of her footsteps, looking through the windows.  Isard smiled.

 

"This is your first time visiting the reconditioning area of Lusankya, isn't it?"  The two stopped in front of a room and viewed the interior.  A young man was strapped into a thin chair, various images flashing before his held-open eyes.

 

"It is."  Daam looked uncomfortable watching the scene before him.

 

"This disturbs you?"  There was an almost mocking tone in Isard's voice. 

 

"I know great strides have been made at this, but sending in rebel prisoners to be sleeper agents for us?  It seems so perverse..."

 

"Afraid of losing your job?"  Isard gave a short laugh before pointing towards the prisoner.  "This is one Lieutenant Kupelo.  Captured on Hoth by our forces and brought here, he's been in this program ever since."

 

"Is the process always this slow?"

 

"How long it takes is entirely dependent on the individual.  Kupelo here breaks easily.  Your prisoner, on the other hand, sounds like an intensive case.  She'll require far more work."

 

A somewhat skeptical look appeared on Leco's face.  "So, they do break and will be perfect sleeper agents: how do you get them back to the rebels without arousing suspicion?"

 

"How would you do it?"  Isard's smile was a challenge, each meeting between them a test as always.

 

Leco paused to think for a while, staring at the rebel prisoner in the conditioning chair.  "Leak a report about a prison ship being near Rebel space.  They'll jump onto it and rescue their comrades, including our agent."

 

Isard's mouth betrayed her icy front with a slight upturn of a smile.  "Good.  That's how we've been doing it for years and the rebels have been none the wiser.  You're beginning to think like the general that you need to be for the future."

 

"You made me do a lot of thinking over the last week." 

 

"And that was your conclusion?  That you need to think about what's on the horizon?"

 

Leco cleared his throat and looked around the hallway.

 

"Every camera in here is mine, Commander," Isard said.  "I appreciate your caution, however."

 

"Yes, Madame Director.  'The Emperor is old and has no heir.'  I want to help when that day comes."

 

The words coming from another voice sounded so very pleasant to Isard's ears.  Even if Soontir Fel had rejected her offer, she was still in a good tactical position, especially with the Super Star Destroyer under her feet.  "I need all the good help that I can get when the day comes, and those who come to my aid will be rewarded heavily."

 

"Your post will be open..."

 

Blue and red eyes shined in perverse merriment.  "You are ambitious."  Leco gave her a look that suggested that it couldn't hurt to try.  "Those who are of use will be rewarded heavily, and those that fail will be punished severely."  His face sank at the implication.  "Now, when will you try next to break Ors?"

 

"I was thinking about bringing her in for another round of interrogation tomorrow morning."

 

Isard continued her walk down the halls of her private prison, passing the hapless Kupelo and several empty chambers on the way towards one of her many offices.  "I want progress this time, Commander.  Some little scrap of information that might prove useful to the Empire."

 

"Of course, Director Isard."  Leco's voice had the slight shiver of a nervous whisperkit within it.  With another word, she dismissed him and watched as he walked out of the corridor and towards his waiting shuttle.  He was a good teacher and just as good of an interrogator, but he was squeamish when it came to some of the more _necessary_ tactics that was needed to get information.

 

Inside of her office, the large holographic map was filled with even more hotspots of rebel activity in the galaxy.  She could just as easily march up to Daam's academy and take over interrogation, letting each and everyone of his students and himself see a true interrogation master at work.  She'd get information before the end of the day.  The small planet representing the planet Bakura lit up and she pulled the information up.  One of the rebels crack starfighter squadrons had just liberated several prisoners from the space prison orbiting the world.  If only she wasn't so busy...

 

***

 

The hotel's conference room, if it could be called that, was a squat rectangle five meters wide and twice that long.  A long table with rounded edges sat in the middle, several chairs around its perimeters.  Cracked  holoscreens showed nighttime views of several Imperial Center landmarks: the Imperial palace in the distance from the base of Monument Plaza, the mushroom shaped dome of the now-abandoned Senate Building, and the sights of the Corellian Quarter.

 

Kyle Katarn sat at the short edge of the table, he and Tarrin Datch facing across the table at a light-furred Bothan.  The canid humanoid scratched at his snout, his dark eyes scanning the area.  "I'm taking a big risk meeting you two here."

 

"Trust me, I don't think anyone's watching us..."  The hotel was as dilapidated as the area around it,  cracked durasteel bricks poorly painted to conceal their flaws.  It had been sheer luck that they even had a conference room, as small as it was.

 

"So you say, Agent Katarn, but the Emperor's eyes are everywhere."  The Bothan looked around the room, pausing at the locked door leading to the main room of the building.  "Especially with this topic.  If Iceheart hears about this, we're finished: you, Lieutenant Datch and my cell."

 

"We've checked this room for bugs about ten times, Soth,  I think we're able to speak safely."  Kyle couldn't blame the being for his paranoia, annoying though it was.  One didn't get to be the head of the largest rebel cell on the Imperial homeworld by being careless.

 

A slight growl of frustration escaped Soth's snout.  "Fine.  You wanted to know about your partner, 'Outsider'?" 

 

"You were on a contact list of ours a couple of years ago," Kyle said.  "We were there for a job around the same region, so I was hoping that you had some news."

 

"The Imperial Security Operations building, yes."  The fur around Soth's neck crinkled just slightly, a gesture that Kyle couldn't recognize.  "We've helped with so many Alliance projects here on Coruscant and your friend's latest is one of them."

 

"Was there any distress call put out by her?"  Tarrin was quick in his question, and the young man looked nervous at any answer.

 

"Outsider never contacted us regarding any trouble she was in.  Our last contact with her was five days ago."  Tarrin sank back into his chair and covered his eyes with a hand, rubbing at his temples.

 

"What did she contact you for?"  Kyle remained on point.  "Assistance, pick up?"

 

"She requested a sniper rifle and gave us a location to place it.  We didn't hear anything about it after that."  There was a hitch to his voice.  "I sent an agent to pick up the rifle just yesterday.  When she returned, she stated that the building had been ransacked and the blaster rifle gone."

 

"So, she was in danger?"  Kyle turned towards Tarrin and shot the pilot a look.

 

"I can't say for certain, but it looks that way."

 

The blaster on Kyle's left hip seemingly grew heavier at the news and he tempered the feeling that he needed to leave at exactly that moment.  Tomorrow would hopefully be soon enough.  "Do you know anything about the layout of that place?"

 

Soth shook his head.  "May none of my group ever know what the inside of that place looks like."

 

"Make it up as I go along, same as always."

 


	14. Chapter Thirteen

** CHAPTER THIRTEEN **

 

Jan's legs burned with overexertion as she leaned next to the door, shoulder digging into the durasteel wall that led outside.  All sense of time had been lost since she woke from her latest microsleep and the one before that, a constant in that long time was the small hum of the Jawa-rigged vibrodagger in her right hand.  The motion detector's alarm sounded it's jarring siren, the only other constant in her vigil.

 

She licked her dry lips, tongue nearly sticking to the parched flesh.  The ambush that she had planned was now in the most tedious portion: the waiting.  It was near suicide; that thought was constant in her foggy mind.  The only other option of waiting until they finally broke her was far less preferable to at least attempting to make a break of it.  There were airspeeders in a garage a few levels down and if she could reach one...

 

***

 

The armory of the _Moldy Crow_ was as cramped as the rest of the ship.  It had been a cargo bay once and despite the racks of weapons on the starboard side, it could still reasonably perform the freighter's original purpose. 

 

Kyle pulled the large blaster pistol from his holster, opening up a small port in the umber-colored barrel and replacing the power cell.  Throughout the numerous missions that he had been on, it had remained the single constant.  The blaster had been a rifle once, but had been drastically shortened by his father, Morgan, and presented to him as a gift before he had left for the Imperial Academy.  It was the last time that he would see his father alive.  The side panel showed green and the rebel replaced the blaster into its holster.

 

The dark body army was removed from its rack next.  It was bulky and it limited his movement just slightly but the heat absorbing panels meant the difference from a serious blaster wound and a fatal one.  Coupled with the personal shield generator on his belt, it created an aura of protection that several Imperials that had heard of him mistook for invincibility. 

 

Two E-11 blaster rifles were next, followed by enough power packs for two reloads apiece.  He strung both rifles over his shoulders on opposite sides of his body and returned to his armory.  His hand hovered over one of the long blaster pistols that Jan preferred but passed over it; space was at a premium so she'd have to do with just the blaster rifle, along with any weapons that she'd scavenge along the way back to the ship.

 

On the right hand side of the armory was a large cannon that took up the majority of the space.  It had two barrels, side by side, and a glowing red energy pack that curved toward the rear of the weapon.  It had been the primary weapon of the Dark Troopers and one of the very few of the weapons that had survived the destruction of the _Arc Hammer_.  It was too bulky to take with him, especially with the walk that he'd have to take to get inside the academy.

 

"You're already here?"  Tarrin Datch's voice carried through the open door from the airlock as the young pilot stepped into the ship.

 

"When I said that I wanted to get this done early, I meant it."  Kyle grabbed the belt of thermal detonators out of their protective cubicle and secured them around his waist.  "You've got your part in this ready?"

 

"Come and get you on the roof once you comm me and say you've found Jan," Tarrin said.  "Wait on the roof and leave if I haven't heard from either of you in twenty minutes." 

 

"That's it."  Kyle walked the length of the freighter to the cockpit and paused at the back of his chair.  He picked up the leather longcoat hanging from the headrest and threw it over his shoulders.  He took a seat and ignored the grips of the blaster rifles as they dug into the padded armor on his back.

 

"You're insane, you know that?"  Tarrin sat down in the rear seat of the ship and pulled the borrowed pilot's goggles over his eyes.

 

"You aren't the first person to tell me that."

 

***

 

Jan Or's ambush spot wasn't the best that she could hope for when it came to killing people with a knife.  The agent knew that but also knew that beings in her position couldn't afford to be picky.  Every different scenario had ran through her mind in the past day before she had chosen this one.  Feigning unconsciousness on her cot would bring her intended victim deep into the room before she struck, but it also easily opened her up to a counterattack from his partner.  The second Stormtrooper that came to take her to the interrogation was a constant foil in all of the other schemes for escape.

Either way, she'd have to move quickly after the first strike, assuming that it would even be fatal.  If.  Maybe.  Possibly.  Her escape plans were littered with those three words, but they were the only thing that she could rely on at the moment.

 

The door hissed open and in the second that she had paused, reflexes dulled by fatigue, the first stormtrooper had taken his first step into the room.  Her left hand moved up and grabbed the white breastplate of the soldier and holding it as hard as she could.  The blade in her right hand hummed as she brought it to the captive Imperial's throat. 

 

The blade met the slightest of resistances as it encountered the airtight bodyglove and dug into the skin below, choking the soldier's startled cry.  Blood ran warm and red down the white armor and her fingers as she sliced downwards.  She blinked as the spray of the severed artery showered the area and her face.

 

With a shove of her shoulders against the dying soldier's midsection, Jan pushed the struggling stormtrooper out into the hallway, right where his companion had been the last time.  A cry of surprise mixed with the clanking of a blaster rifle hitting the floor.  "Prisoner esc...!"  The filtered voice drowned out the other sounds in the hallway.

 

The agent moved quickly, dropping her blade and racing for the fallen blaster before the other gun could be brought to bear upon her.  The lone stormtrooper began to push his fatally wounded companion off of his body and grabbed for the dark blaster rifle at his side while Jan's swiftly aimed at him.  The red beam of energy from her blaster struck him in the head, instantly killing him.

 

Jan collapsed against the wall, breathing heavily, eyes peering down the hallway for any more Imperial troops.  The dying stormtrooper kicked feebly at the ground, a hand up to his mangled throat as he futilely attempted to hold his life blood inside of him even as it puddled crimson on the gray floor.  The rebel raised her blaster rifle, aiming at center mass, and gave him the mercy that he would never show her.

 

Taking the utility belt from one of the dead troopers, she looked around the area for anything else useful.  The medpac on the wall caught her eyes, a large box with a red cross stamped above the Imperial logo.  She hurried as best she could towards the wall, blaster raised in case the reinforcements that the dead stormtroopers had tried to raise were on their way. 

 

With a swing upwards, the medpac opened and revealed the bandages, antiseptics and plethora of drugs within.  Years of experience in both Intelligence and field missions let her know what each and every one of them did and how to administer them.  She grabbed one of the many hypodermic needles and removed the cap.  Despite her blurry eyes, she read the label as quick as she dared.

 

"BioTech Adrenal Stimulant..."  She muttered the words aloud.  "Remove cap and inject in thigh.  Effects last for four hours...  User will suffer from possible adrenal system crash at end."  With a quick movement she jammed the needle into her thigh and felt the automatic injector send the serum out into her bloodstream.  The stim worked nearly instantly, clearing her mind from the fog that the sleep deprivation had pulled over it and filled her with the energy that she had days before.

 

"Four hours."  She picked up her makeshift vibroblade and jaunted down the walkway towards more familiar settings.  "It should be plenty of time."

 

***

 

The traffic in this district of Coruscant was heavy at this time of morning.  Numerous airspeeders and larger ships made their daily commute from one area of the ecumenopolis to another.  The _Moldy Crow_ shifted easily into another lane, moving in between the floating beacons into a hole in the speeders. 

 

Kyle stood in the airlock of his ship, holding on to a restraining strap that was secured to the wall.  Days of worry and hours of as much preparation as he could do had led to this moment.  The meeting with the rebel cell leader had done much to comfort his mind.  He wasn't insane and it wasn't just worry: she had been uncovered somehow and was likely being held prisoner.

 

"We've got about five minutes if this traffic holds."  Tarrin's voice came through clear in Kyle's earpiece.

 

"I copy."  Kyle replaced his comlink back onto his belt.  He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths to calm himself.  The ramp of the craft opened with the press of a button, the warning klaxon sounding as the floor in front of him lowered.  Air rushed into the airlock, pulling at Kyle's coat and filling his ears with a loud roar.  Half a kilometer below the freighter was a maze of buildings and walkways, long trenches designating streets on the temporary surface erected between the buildings.

 

The speed of the craft reduced and the freighter dipped below the current traffic lanes.  The buildings on the ground grew steadily larger in his eyesight until it seemed as if Tarrin was trying to skim the freighter's belly onto the very tops of the cloudcutters.

 

"Tarrin, be careful, I don't want my ship to crash..."  He shouted over the wind, hoping that the pilot could hear him. 

 

"Don't worry, I've got plenty of clearance."

 

The amount of detail that Kyle could see on every rooftop that the _Crow_ passed begged to differ.  He shook his head at his own discomfort.  An unfamiliar pilot--despite his reputation-- taking the controls of his ship was enough to make anyone paranoid.  It could be Han Solo and Chewbacca themselves at the controls of his ship and he'd still be feeling the same way.

 

"It doesn't look that way!"

 

The freighter slowed to a crawl and dropped just slightly.  Kyle could see every detail in the red sand that served as traction on the durasteel roof.  He jumped off of the freighter's ramp and raced across the roof towards the service door.  "I'm down," he said.

 

"See you soon, I hope.  May the Force be with you."  With those parting words, the engines of the _Moldy Crow_ whined in acceleration as the freighter soared off back onto the skylanes.  Kyle watched as his freighter merged back into the lines of speeders and disappeared into the distance before opening the unlocked door and entering the building.

 

Gloved hand gripping the barrel of his blaster rifle tightly, Kyle stepped into the dark building.  The rebel removed the short field lamp from his belt and switched it on.  Dust and other debris from the walls and ceiling littered the floor, looking as undisturbed as they had been since the day that they fell.  It was different than any other "abandoned" cloudcutter that he had seen and been in before.  It was too undisturbed and the walls were clear of graffiti.  Even the word "abandoned" had been a bit of a misnomer, as vagrants frequently found shelter in the dark buildings.  Then again, he thought, an Intelligence district in Coruscant was bound to be a hell of a lot different than Nar Shaddaa. 

 

The trip down the stairwell were uneventful as he passed doors long sealed and unlit security holocams that hadn't seen use since before he was born.  He paused before the door to the level, the walkway leading to the School of Torturers still a level or so down.  The glowlamp in his hand caught sight of several sets of footprints in the dust: the small depressions of a woman in boots and the numerous large boot prints of men.  The male footprints were obviously stormtroopers, the near unyielding plasteel covered leather preventing most movement of the foot itself.  Kyle had always hated the damn things despite the protection that they offered.  The woman's feet were another mystery.  Were they Jan's feet and she'd been captured as she went to retrieve the blaster that had been placed there?  Perhaps they belonged to the rebel cell member who had gone to retrieve it just a few days prior and found it missing.  His hand hovered over the controls for the door before turning back and heading down the stairs once again.  No matter how intriguing the mystery was, it had nothing to do with the task at hand anymore.

 

"Spast."  Kyle cursed as he reached the door to the Academy.  The trip through the abandoned building and the open walkway had been perfect and uneventful until now.  The door leading into the school was locked, accessible only to those who had a specific security code. 

 

The agent examined the door as best that he could, studying the edges where the sliding metal met the walls.  As best that he could tell, the door wasn't that thick and could easily be breached with a large enough explosion.  Cursing that he had left his sequencer charges back on his ship, he removed the next best thing that he did have, his thermal detonators.

 

He sat three of them down by the door, each one set to its lowest burst setting.  Kyle activated the last one and raced down the walkway, setting up outside of the safe zone with his blaster rifle held high.  "Five...  Four... Three..." he counted down the seconds left on the detonators, nervous about what lay on the other side of the door. 

 

The spherical super powered grenades exploded with a groundquaking blast, causing Kyle's ears to ring as he peered through the smoke.  As the dark grey fog cleared, the burning metal opening in the door glowed brightly.  Walking quickly into the opening, Kyle was finally inside of the academy.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

** CHAPTER FOURTEEN **

What was taking those stormtroopers so long?  That thought ran through Leco Daam's mind as he sat inside of the observation suite.  They had left to pick up Jan Ors in her cell five minutes ago with the specific instructions to return directly to the interrogation room.  He checked the chrono on his wrist and slapped the table in frustration.

"SV-300, SV-210, where are you?"  The comlink remained silent.  He repeated the question again and received the same response.  With the flick of a switch, he opened the comlink to everyone in the building, student and stormtrooper alike.  "Possible prison escape, I repeat, possible prison escape.  All stormtroopers report to their assigned positions.  All students, shelter in place."

"What do I do, commander?"  Cedral stood near the door, already locking it via the console.  Always the timely one, he had been the first to arrive for the interrogation session. 

Leco walked towards a secured cabinet in the wall across from the door and pressed in his command code into the lock.  The panel of the cabinet slid open, revealing three round-barreled blaster pistols with a small energy cell clip near the opening of the barrel.  He checked the power level of the blasters before handing one of the scoped pistols to Cedral.

"I'm heading to my office to coordinate the search for our prisoner."  He motioned towards the door as he readied his own weapon.  "You're with me."

Cedral balked slightly at the order.  His record as an intelligence agent had been exemplary, Leco recalled.  The agent had infiltrated a rebel base a year before and had been responsible for its destruction and the capture of several important prisoners.  Despite his record, the young man had never fired a shot in anger in his Imperial career.  "I need someone to help me coordinate the efforts and get to my office safely, Cedral."  Leco kept his voice calm despite the situation around him.  "You're the only one here, so it has to be you."

Cedral opened his mouth as if to say something but shut it quickly.  Holding his blaster pistol up in the air, elbow crooked, he opened the door into the hall.  "Yes, sir," he said.

The two walked through the door, Cedral taking point as they moved into the hall.  "It's clear."

The klaxon of the fire alarm sounded through the hallways and warning lights flashed.  Daam looked around in confusion before voicing it into his comlink.

"Commander, we've got a fire alarm in Section 12," the voice of his head of security sounded clearly despite the noise.

"Send a team to take care of it, Bennett."  Leco shook his head and gestured towards Cedral.  "I swear, the tide is high when the hurricanes come." 

The younger intelligence agent frowned in confusion.  "It means that bad things follow bad things," Leco explained and continued down the hallway.

***

"Now what?"  Jan Ors spoke the words out loud as she jogged down the hallway.  Throughout the base, red warning lights flashed and sirens sounded.  Leco Daam's orders had just come through the spare comlink on her stolen belt, as unhelpful as they had been to her.

A corner loomed up ahead, two forks in the path.  Her mind struggled to remember what path was the right way to go, the mental acuity restored by the stims fighting against stress and relative unfamiliarity with the layout of this section of the academy and losing. 

Pressing her body as close as she could to the wall, she leaned forward and surveyed her surroundings.  Around the corner was a squad of stormtroopers running heavily towards her position.  Jan moved back behind the corner and ran back where she came from.  If the stormtroopers had seen her, they had made no mention of it.  She opened a nearby door and ducked into the room, closing it as quick as she could.

Jan leaned against the closed door and took a few deep breaths.  For the moment, at least, she was safe.

The sound of a tool dropping alerted the rebel agent, followed by a familiar voice.  "By the Emperor..."

She turned quickly to meet the higher pitched voice, blaster raised.  She found herself staring at a man with light brown hair down to his shoulders.  The corners of his thin goatee curled slightly in alarm.  Donlat Tascel, she thought, one of the other prospective interrogators in the academy.  His hand was placed on the comlink on his belt, finger just near the small cylinder's "on" switch.  The deactivated droids in the room remained silent, the one that Donlat had been working on a mess of wires out of its midsection.

"Hands off the comlink."  Her finger cradled the trigger of the blaster, ready for any movements that he may make.

Donlat's finger didn't move.  "Let's not get hasty."  He began to circle around the table, free hand raised in a peaceful gesture.  "I'm just going to..."

Jan raised the rifle up, aiming down the durasteel sights.  "I said 'hands off the comm,' so do it!"  She circled around from the door, never letting the Imperial getting too far behind any cover.

Donlat gave her a nervous smile.  "Now, let's just stay calm and..."  He made the move to dive behind the workshop's bench.  Jan fired off a shot that slammed into his stomach as he made his leap.  With a cry of pain and fear, Donlat collapsed against the wall and the comlink rolled away, propelled by either his injuries or a sudden movement to throw it, Jan couldn't tell which.

When Jan rounded the corner she found Donlat leaning against the desk.  A bloody hand clutched at the large wound in his stomach.  The honey colored eyes filled with anger and hatred moved to face her, legs struggling to push himself away from his killer.  He had no weapon, at least none that was obvious.  A frightened sigh was his final actions, eyes stilling in their death glare at her.

Jan stood over Donlat's body for seconds.  The man had been one of the very few decent Imperials that she had met at the Academy and now he was dead by her hand.  He had been diving for cover, scared out of his wits by her very appearance.  His hand had been on his comlink and the possibility that he was going to alert the guards to her position had been too great to risk.

She walked over to the comlink where it had landed, a meter away from Donlat's lifeless hand.  Her eyes darted from the device to Donlat's body and then back to the comlink.  Her boot smashed into the comlink, leaving nothing but chunks of plasteel and exposed wiring on the dirty floor.

***

Standard Imperial procedure for an unexplained explosion was to send a squad of soldiers in to investigate, followed closely by a team of emergency techs.  Kyle knew the procedure, had drilled for it in the Imperial Academy on Carida, and was prepared for it.  He sprinted down the hallway, taking a corner to the left, hoping to draw the majority of the Imperial's attention to his impromptu distraction and away from his real destination.  Wherever that was.

He headed down the hall and stopped at the depression of a door as he heard boots stomping around a nearby corner.  Kyle slowly raised his blaster rifle up and thumbed the fire selection switch one notch forward from semi-automatic to a full burst mode.  Shifting his body to gain as much cover from the door's well that he could, Kyle leaned his head and blaster out from behind the wall and waited.

The first two stormtroopers in the column paraded past the corner and turned to face Kyle, followed by the second row.  The rebel squeezed the trigger of his blaster rifle, pouring red bursts of energy towards the enemy.  The front line of the white-armored Imperials fell to the blaster fire, black scorch marks smoking in the gray hallway.

"Find some cover!" the now leading Stormtrooper called out to his depleted squad.  He hit the ground, using his fallen sergeant as a crude form of cover.  The stormtroopers returned fire, forcing Kyle to retreat completely behind the door. 

He couldn't stay behind the cover forever, that thought was foremost in his mind as he fired a burst of blind fire down the hallway.  The recoil shook his hand badly and threw off every single shot that he took.  At least it made them keep their heads down, he thought as he surveyed his situation.  He pressed the control console for the door and heard the solid thudding noise of a secured lock.  Heading back the way that he came would put him in the line of fire for the stormtroopers ahead and staying there would just allow them to strengthen their numbers enough to outflank him.

Kyle pulled another one of the thermal detonators off of his belt.  He cursed at the thought of using half of his detonators within the first five minutes of the mission, but tossed it back into his palm like it was a childhood toy.  Allowing the rifle in his hand to swing by the strap against his shoulder, he modified the detonator to the right specifications: medium blast radius with a six second timer.

Kyle sprang loose from his cover and tossed the thermal down the hallway.  The metal ball bounced on the floor with a clink.  The stormtrooper on the ground either didn't see the movement or ignored it as he opened fire.  A slight stinging sensation slammed into Kyle's arm as the sizzling sound of the energy bolt impacting upon his personal energy shield combined with the green flash of light that it emitted.  Returning to the cover of the doorway, he picked up the blaster rifle and waited.

The sound of the explosion through the halls echoed off of the walls along with the reverberation of its shock wave.  Kyle moved quickly after the explosion, speeding from the doorway and into the passage.  The prone stormtrooper that had shot him was dead as was another Imperial just at the corner.  Their five remaining squad mates were fleeing away from the blast and about to recover.  Kyle opened up on them, catching two in the back before they even knew that he was there.  The others ran towards other openings in the wall, searching for cover. 

Another burst fired towards them, range, recoil and the notorious inaccuracy of the E-11 conspiring against the rebel.  The plethora of blaster fire peeled off around the soldiers and impacted against the far wall.  The next shot was on point as it caught a shooting Imperial in the right shoulder as he leaned too far out.  The wounded soldier dropped his blaster and sprawled to the floor, no longer a threat.  Two left.

Kyle advanced down the hall, letting the blaster rifle drop and pulling his pistol from its holster.  The stormtroopers saw their opening and fired, a single shot hitting his shield and fizzling out.  The more accurate pistol shots didn't.  His enemies vanquished, Kyle removed the nearly depleted energy cell from the shield generator on his belt and replaced it with the sole one remaining.


	16. Chapter Fifteen

** CHAPTER FIFTEEN **

Jan Ors was pinned down behind a bank of computer consoles.  Blaster fire screamed around her, filling the air with acrid smell of burnt ozone and the sizzling of electronics.  She fired above the console, blindly shooting in the enemy's general direction to keep them down.

She had emerged from the droid workshop that would be the resting place of Donlat and walked soon after that into half a squad of stormtroopers.  Taking cover and fending them off had been the only thing that she could do.  Firing off another controlled burst, she snuck a peek at their numbers.  Somewhere along the line, one of the five Imperials had been hit and he was currently dragging himself by his injured leg behind the line of his compatriots.  She ducked back behind the line as another salvo of fire headed her way.

"Can't you give a girl some space?" she called out, taunting them.  Another volley hit the console behind her, too close.  At least, she thought as she shot another blind burst at her opponents, Daam and Isard had the sense to not give their stormtroopers under their employ the standard thermal detonators.  Her elbow brushed against the stormtrooper's utility belt around her waist as she shifted her weight around.  Not arming them with thermal detonators or grenades also meant that she didn't have them.  A pity, she thought as she reloaded her blaster rifle, because she certainly could use one right now.

She broke cover for a second and aimed a burst of blaster fire at the uncovered soldiers, taking two down before falling back.

"Fall back!"  The filtered voice of the stormtroopers  sounded over the blaster fire.  Jan kept firing, defending herself against a possible ploy before finally risking taking a look.  Three stormtroopers lay on the ground, dead or wounded, as the other two stepped backwards in retreat.  Her way out of the predicament presenting itself, she broke from her own defenses and ran down the hallway, away from the Imperials.  A few scattered blaster shots headed her way and exploded on the walls around her.  Turning the corner, she allowed herself a brief respite and slowed her pace to a brisk walk, occasionally turning her head to check behind her for any sign of pursuit.

The hallway took her past the dormitories, the door inside closed firmly and likely locked.  The closest stairs were near to her now, only about 100 meters away.  Then it was a walk down two flights and a quarter of the building.  She sighed and walked faster towards her destination.  Holding her rifle in front of her, she opened the door to the stairwell and found it empty.

She stepped into the flight of stairs and descended, taking each step slowly as she went.  With a pause at the landing, she peered down towards the next one and the door to the next level; empty.  Jan repeated process down the next pair of steps, cautious of any patrolling Imperials along the way.

One of her feet had just touched the top step when she heard it: the explosion from somewhere beyond that door.  Jan paused, foot returning fully to the landing where she stood.  All of the stormtroopers that she'd encountered so far hadn't carried any explosives of any type, and if they had they wouldn't be using them on a level where she hadn't even stepped foot on.  An impossible thought invaded her mind.  There was no way that Kyle could have known about her capture, but that very thought, that hope was the first thing that came to her.  It was a trap, it had to have been!  The Imperials were using her partner's MO to lure her exactly where they wanted her to be.

Against the better judgment on that last thought, she walked to the door and opened it.

***

The office of Leco Daam had been silent for the past two minutes, the owner sitting in his chair staring at the images floating in front of him with a look of shock upon his young face.  Eyes stinging, he finally remembered to blink, sending the excess tears down his cheek.  Jan Ors had escaped and had already taken out six of his and Director Isard's stormtroopers along with one of his pupils.  On a screen between two still hallways, Donlat Tescal's body lay against the bench of the droid workshop.  The young Giehlan human had been an expert at programming droids for surveillance use and had signed up to learn how best to program them for interrogation purposes.

The death of Donlat and the escape of his prisoner wasn't what filled the intelligence agent's mind with despair and fear.    The screen that his eyes were trained on featured only a single man, short-haired and bearded with a long coat covering the majority of his body.  He'd seen the same man before, on brief still images captured during the ISO building massacre.  Leco knew that the rebel was human, would bleed if shot and would die if they hit him in the right place, but that still didn't stop his blood from running cold.

Leco's eyes moved to the camera on Jan Ors.  She had made her way off of the third level of the building and had been moving down, perhaps towards the speeder garage, but she had changed her position on the way.  He looked at the camera number on the screen with her on it and the one featuring the other rebel.  "Kriffing hells, they're on the same level..."

The commander forced the anxiety away as best he could.  He picked up the comlink and switched to specially coded frequency.  "All soldiers, intruders on level 2, sections 5 and 8.  Opposite sides of the building, squads Aurek and Besh engage the escaped prisoner in section 8.  Cresh and Dorn, you have our intruder in Five.  Engage him with caution.  Repeat: engage with caution."  Leco paused for a second.  It was a risk, but one that he needed to take.  "Break out the thermal detonators."

"Yes, sir!"  Vanet's voice was clear in the office's speakers.  In the lower frames of the holographic screens, the young officer's platoon was already beginning to split up.  Vanet took personal command of Cresh and Dorn, leaving the other two squads under command of the senior Sergeant-Major Harmat.

Leco watched as the two squads entered the locked down turbolifts and travelled down to the level of the two rebels and then back to the screens they were on.  Both of them were currently engaging a number of Isard's complement of stormtroopers, trading blaster fire without doing much of anything.

"Do you think they'll get them, commander?"  Cedral stepped away from the door, keeping his blaster pistol handy.  The agent ran a hand through his tightly curled hair and paced around Leco's desk.

"Vanet's young, but he scored high marks at the Academy."  Leco watched as a stray shot slammed into the camera monitoring the battle with Katarn, clearing the holographic screen and leaving a gap of reality through the projection.  "He has to..."

***

Kyle ran as fast as his feet could carry him down the hallway, away from the stormtroopers that were pursuing him.  The lack of proper cover in the area added on to their combined firepower had been too much for him take, at least where he was.  Ducking around another corner, he pulled out his last remaining thermal detonator and set the bomb to explode upon contact with the ground.  "Dead being's switch" it had been called on numerous worlds and useful for ensuring your safety in a potentially fatal situation.

"Hey buckethead, catch!"  Kyle tossed the sphere as the first stormtrooper rounded the corner at a run.  The rebel dived backwards and covered his head with an arm as the explosion rocked the area around him.  The sizzling sound of his energy shield filled his ears just as the smell of burning leather assaulted his nostrils.  Kyle raised the arm that had been shielding his head with and saw the sleeve of his jacket smoldering in the light.  He patted out the red hot embers the best that he could in the silent hallway. 

Kyle stood from his prone position, his ears ringing.  He checked the shield generator that had just saved his life.  The generator was a bisected circle with a rectangular control panel connecting the two halves.  Carefully lifting the hot device, Kyle opened the pale covering for the controls and looked inside.  The green light was blinking quickly underneath the unlit red indicator.  Almost at half strength would have to do, he thought as he replaced the cover.

The sound of blaster fire erupted in the distance.  Kyle paused and listened for it again.  Durasteel walls were notorious for reflecting sounds, making a whisper as loud as a scream one of his fellow cadets at the Imperial Academy had said.  Another crack of blaster fire sounded and Kyle ran towards its source.

It didn't take long before he turned another corner and ran into a white wall of armor five meters ahead of him.  He was facing their backs, each of them opening fire on someone taking cover up ahead and returning each shot.  Kyle regained his senses and steadied himself into a firing stance.  The stormtroopers were too involved in their current target to notice him and he would only have one shot before they knew.  A concussion rifle would have come in extremely useful at the moment, the agent thought, but he had left it behind in the _Moldy Crow_ 's armory like so many other weapons that would have come in handy.  He aimed for center mass at the Imperial on the far left and opened up.  Three blasts hit the first Imperial and he moved on to the second soldier. 

Kyle shifted his aim to the third and squeezed the trigger for another burst of fire.

*click*

"Oh Sithspit..." he cursed.

The third Stormtrooper turned, blaster rifle held at waist height and fire a single shot towards him.  Kyle felt like he was punched in the gut by the shot as he stumbled back a meter before falling onto his back.  A frantic beeping filled his ears as the epicenter of heat at his midsection spread radiantly through him. 

Kyle's boots pushed his body across the ground, left hand grabbing the blaster pistol in its holster and pulling it free.  Instinct guided him even as he struggled to breathe.  As his target adjusted his aim to fire, Kyle fired a quick shot from his off hand, hitting the side of the stormtrooper's armor.  It was enough. 

The stormtrooper cursed out in pain and shock as the blaster bolt hit him, giving the rebel agent enough time regain enough composure to roll around the corner.  Kyle propped himself up against the wall, each and every breath a struggle.  He took a quick inventory of himself as he readied the second blaster rifle upon his back: the shot had knocked the breath out him, that part was readily obvious.  The pain in his stomach was still there, a burning sensation that thankfully didn't feel that deep.  Nowhere near fatal and that was all that counted at the moment.

A metallic clinking sound hit next to the wounded rebel as a cylindrical object rolled into view.  Kyle reached for the fragmentation grenade, each and every desperate thought in his mind to push it around the corner and away from him.  The grenade was still rolling as Kyle stretched his arm out futilely, fingers still centimeters away.  The explosive stopped its roll and then reversed, rounding the corner where it exploded harmlessly.

"What the?"  The stormtrooper behind the wall cursed what had to have been an invisible tilt in the building's floor.  Kyle stood up, adrenaline pumping through his system.  He closed his eyes for a second, intuition telling him where each and every one of the remaining stormtroopers would be.  He fired a few blind shots, hearing a single telltale cry of pain before leaning out and firing a burst. 

The head stormtrooper fell to the ground, followed by his remaining compatriot.  The exhausted rebel walked out into the corridor, silent to remain undetected by any remaining stormtroopers.  The familiar sound of an energy cell being slapped into a blaster clacked from behind another junction up ahead.  Raising his blaster, he slowly stepped around the corner.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

** CHAPTER SIXTEEN **

The sound of explosions and blaster fire around the corner ceased, giving Jan Ors a much needed chance to reload her stolen blaster.  Boots thudded next to the edge of the wall, prompting the escaped prisoner to hasten her movements. 

She raised her loaded blaster rifle just as a familiar unarmored man stepped around the corner, blaster pointing at her.  Jan immediately lowered her blaster, a warm grin on her face.  "Kyle, we have to stop meeting like this."

Her partner lowered his blaster, his body language suggesting that he'd like to do far more than just lower his hand to help her to her feet.  "You pointing a blaster at me or me pointing one at you?"

Jan accepted his hand and pulled herself up from her crouched position.  "Both."  She could see him look at her face, at the still wet blood from the first of many stormtroopers that she had killed.  "Don't worry, it isn't mine."

"Good," Kyle said.  He pulled a few spare power packs that he had collected from fallen Imperials along the way and handed them to her.  "I'd hate to run into the guy if it was."

"I don't know how you found out I was here, but I'm grateful." The two began to walk down the hallway towards the stairwell.  "You looked like you were handling yourself well."

"I was pretty good without you," she said with a cocky smile on her face.  She looked around the building, walls scorched with carbon scores that scarred the grey metal.  "Do you have a way out, or am I in charge of that--like always?  There's speeders a level below."

Kyle grabbed his comlink from his belt and thumbed it on.  "Tarrin, this is Kyle, I've found Jan."

The name stirred a memory from nearly four years previously in Jan's mind.  They came through a haze as thick as the morning fog on the planet Oulanne.  She had taken ill on the planet and was injured.  Their mission done, her crew had taken off to find some medical help from her while they hid her in a cramped storage locker.  A 17 year old boy found her and fled the system with their ship when the Imperials finally caught up with him.  She hadn't seen him since she gave him a recommendation for being a pilot on Dantooine, but had always remembered his piloting during the chase.  "Tarrin Datch?"

"See?  I do listen to your war stories."

"I copy, Kyle, I'll be heading your way now."  Tarrin's voice over the comlink was hazy.

Kyle pointed towards the ceiling.  "We go up."

***

Ysanne Isard watched on her private monitors as stormtrooper after stormtrooper was mowed down by the two rebels.  The two traitors were steadily moving closer towards the other with only a few of Daam's and her soldiers between them.  One after the other, each of them died between the combined resistance.

Her eyes turned to the center screen, Leco Daam in his office "coordinating" the defense of his facility.  He was panicking, planning on sending wave after endless wave at them until he finally managed to overcome them.  Commander Stinnett had made the same mistake when Katarn had invaded his own building.  That had cost him his life when Vader found out about the massacre, and it was the last straw.

The Director of Imperial Intelligence pressed a yellow button upon her command chair, the pale light shining in the dark room.  "This is Isard to all of my stormtroopers.  Report to the speeder garage and pull out.  Do not engage the rebels." 

The affirmatives from her personal soldiers sounded through the office as the white-armored troops began to fall back on her cameras.  Isard disabled them all save for one, magnified as each additional camera screen disappeared.  Commander Daam was still in his office, directing soldiers with impassioned gestures towards the screen.  He stopped mid point, his screens showing her soldiers beginning their retreat.  The younger man shook his head in shock.  Isard crossed her arms in front of her chest, the slightest curve of her lips tugging upwards at the sight.

She flipped a switch at her left and then pressed the yellow button once again.  "Commander Daam."  She kept her voice even.  He turned to her holographic projection in his office, face filled with confusion and despair.

"Director Isard."  His lips quivered as he stumbled across his words.  "W-what are you doing?"

"When I make bad investments, I get rid of them, commander."  She glared at him through the holoemitter.

"No, you don't understand, I'm going to get them!  I just need your soldiers!"

"You're wasting stormtroopers that aren't yours on a battle already lost, Commander.  I will not allow you to waste resources that I need."  He pleaded some more, begging for help that he would only botch.

"I have already given you enough chances.  I could order Cedral to kill you right now."  Daam's face turned to the other agent in the room.  Cedral had already began to cross the distance between the two, hand tightly gripping his blaster.  "But I won't."  The latter agent stopped in his tracks and turned his attention back to the door. 

Isard gave Daam a false smile.  "I think I will give you one more chance, commander.  Jan Ors remembers you and your torture droid and now she has the means to get revenge."  Daam's mouth fell open as his eyes went wide.  "Survive the day, Leco, and I'll only demote you so far down that you'll be watching the HoloNews for treason."

***

Leco Daam collapsed in his chair, sweat beading upon his forehead and dampening the base of his hair.  The screen went blank, an ultimate finality to everything.  When he had woken up that morning, the dreams of being the head of Imperial Intelligence were still in his head.  Now those dreams were gone, dashed and salted by two rebel agents.  Two kriffing agents!  He buried his head in his hands, tears coming unbidden but silent.

"Commander?"

He leaned back into his chair at Cedral's question, hands coming up to straighten his uniform.  "Yes, Lieutenant?"  His voice was weak, but filled with conviction.

"What do you want us to do?"

"Leave if you want.  Drop your blaster and your comlink and head back to your quarters.  I don't want what happened to Donlat to happen to anyone else."

Cedral nodded and dropped his blaster onto Leco's desk, followed by his comlink.  "Good luck, sir" he said.  The lower-ranked agent ran towards the door and headed out.  Now even his students were abandoning him.

Leco held his blaster in his hand, his wrist moved downward almost involuntarily so that the barrel was pointing at his head.  His finger moved off of the trigger guard, holding tight to the grip as he laid the blaster down upon his leg.  It would have been so easy to have just pulled the trigger and ended it.  His rebel "friends" that he had betrayed after infiltrating them could have done that, as well.  They could have surrendered to the Imperial Raider corvettes that he had summoned, but they had died fighting.  They had died as warriors, and he would do the same if that was to be his fate.

Cedral's blaster was picked up from the desk and placed on the floor, along with the blaster that Leco had picked up for himself.  He flipped the desk, spilling datapads and a desktop computer to the floor.  Leco kneeled against the desk, grabbing both blasters and aiming them towards the door.  The weight of both weapons in his hands was cumbersome and he supported his arms against the edge of the table.


	18. Chapter Seventeen

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"What the hell?"

Discarded blaster rifles littered the abandoned hallway, power packs stripped from them. The doors along the sides of the corridor were locked tightly. Kyle and Jan walked through the hallways, blasters still at the ready but their minds wondering.

"It looks like they were in a hurry," Jan said.

"This isn't standard Imperial retreat procedure." Kyle rubbed at his bearded chin in confusion. "It isn't any standard trap taught at the Academy, either." He walked down the hallway, alternating his vision between the path ahead and the blasters on the ground. "They wanted us to know they were fleeing, that's certain."

He shrugged his shoulders. "On to the roof, then." Kyle turned to look at Jan. She walked down the opposite end, determination in her eyes. "Unless you have unfinished business here?"

She turned her face towards him, a trace of suspicion in her eyes. "How did you know that?"

"I'd want to kill the rodder, too."

The two paused before the stairwell. "I was sent here to do that anyway," she said. She hesitated for a moment, thinking about something. "We should have enough time before the stims I took wear off."

"We better finish what you started then, shouldn't we?"

Jan nodded in affirmation.

The silence of the halls was broken up by the sound of footsteps racing along a perpendicular path. Kyle held up a hand, fist closed, signifying quiet. The two took the best defensive positions that they could, moving up against the wall and aiming their blasters towards the sound.

A dark-skinned human male ran out into the junction, hair cut short with a short beard on his triangular face. The grey Imperial uniform that he wore was covered in sweat under his armpits. He was unarmed, the belt around his waist empty.

"Halt!" The Imperial complied, stopping so suddenly that he nearly slipped on the floor. He stood where he stopped, hands high in the air. "You have a com on you?" Kyle held his blaster rifle on the Imperial.

"It's Cedral," Jan said. "One of the other students."

"N-no..." He looked nervously from one blaster rifle to another.

"He might know something." Jan approached the Imperial, blaster lowered to her side. Her eyes narrowed as she closed the distance between them. "Where's Leco?"

Cedral stammered out a few inconsequential words. Kyle slammed his forearm into the Imperial's chest, pushing him into the wall. "She asked you a question."

"He's in his office!" Cedral's grip on his forearm loosened as the defensive mechanism gave way to sense. 

"Is he guarded?"

"It's just him?"  Cedral's voice was stammering with fear.  A deep sigh of relief escaped as Kyle stepped back from him.

"You came here to study interrogation? Consider that a free lesson." He switched the setting on his blaster rifle to stun. "And I really can't let you tell people where we are." A blue ring shot from his rifle and into the Imperial, the other man seizing slightly before slumping down onto the floor.

"They kind of frowned upon 'good agent' and 'bad agent' here." Jan hefted her blaster rifle back up, a grin beaming on her tired face.

"How are they on torture droids?" The grin disappeared, making Kyle wish that he'd never even said that. "Never mind, let's go. Where's Leco's office?"

She gave a long and winding set of directions that led through the labyrinthine building. The halls were empty save for the scurrying mouse droids that raced away upon seeing any sentient life.

"This isn't right..." Jan looked around the hallways, searching for the stormtroopers that weren't there.

"Tell me about it," Kyle said. The pair neared the final corner and Kyle raised his arm once again to call them to a halt. "You think Cedral was lying and they're all there at the office?"

"I wouldn't put it past Leco to surround himself in case we stopped by." She peered around the corner. "Empty." She returned to her original spot, face turned in confusion.

"They never taught anything like this at the Academy." Kyle turned the corner himself and confirmed the long empty hallway ahead. "Cedral was certainly in a hurry, though."

"Mynocks leaving a space hulk?"

Kyle shrugged. "I guess, you're the one who knew these people more than I do."

"Everything about this just seems odd..."

They stopped outside of the door to Leco Daam's office. Kyle on the right side of the door and Jan leaned against the gaudy sign listing several of the administrator's titles and accomplishments.

Jan's hand readied next to the console of the door. "Open it up and close it to take a peek?" Kyle nodded at her suggestion and stared around the corner of the door well. The door opened and revealed a moderately large room filled with holoscreens and cases filled with holobooks. A desk lay in the middle of the room, overturned. A blaster shot screamed past him and forced him to return quickly to cover.

"Looks like it's just him," Kyle said. "He's behind the desk in the middle of the room, a blaster pistol in his hand, maybe two." He fired a blind burst around the corner. "He's dug in pretty good, too."

He took another quick look after another quick burst of blaster fire to force Leco to keep his head down. "There's a bookshelf I can use to get some cover from him. Keep his head down while I'm on my way."

Jan double checked the power level on her blaster. "Ready," she said.

The blaster rifle dropped back to Kyle's side and the agent adjusted the strap around his shoulder before unholstering his blaster pistol. His back was against the wall, the thermal detonators that were there at the beginning of the day no longer an option. "Ready."

Blaster fire sounded through the mostly empty hallway as Jan fired a constant stream of bolts into the office. Kyle gripped the handle of his blaster tightly, hoping that if he was really lucky Jan would actually hit the commander with her blind burst. The loud staccato of shots ended and Kyle took that as his cue. The agent's legs pumped as he raced into the room, blaster pointed in the general direction of the table. Daam was nowhere to be seen as Kyle reached the bookcase and hid behind it. Switching his blaster to his off hand, he motioned towards Jan in the doorway.

He fired a series of shots at the table, letting each one slam into the wooden surface, taking small chunks out with every shot. Kyle jammed the sky with his free hand and heard Jan run out to the other side of the room.

***

The sound of his desk being shot rang loud in Leco's ears and scrambled his already frayed nerves. They were keeping him down and slowly sneaking up upon him. The obvious fact that his assailants had no grenades was a mixed blessing to the administrator; he was still alive but completely at their mercy. He shifted around his desk and popped up quickly, barely giving himself enough time to even get a shot off before ducking down. The male agent was close and thankfully too concerned with shooting at his desk to keep him down than shooting at her personally.

Squatting on the ground, Leco quickly assessed his situation: he would have no chance against these two in a blaster fight. He was outnumbered and outgunned so he would have to take the blasters out of the equation. He dropped one of his blasters on the ground and reversed his grip on the other.

His legs exploded upward and Leco noticed Katarn begin to move his own blaster pistol towards him. Snapping his hand forward, Leco released his grip upon the blaster and rushed the man. The smell of burning ozone rushed behind him as Ors missed her shot and Leco thanked the Emperor for the first time in his life that E-11s could be notoriously inaccurate. The thrown blaster missed Katarn's head, but made him duck, bringing the blaster away from Leco for the second that he needed.

Leco shot his forearm towards Katarn, connecting solidly upon the agent's jaw. The joyous sound of a blaster pistol hitting the floor was the sweetest symphony that Leco had ever heard. He followed up the forearm with a punch to the Rebel's stomach. His fist hit its target and Leco felt the hard cushion of a blast vest upon his knuckles. The agent reacted just the same to the attack, bending over and crying out in pain. Leco looked down at where his fist had connected and saw the dark carbon scoring on the armor.

Katarn's hands closed around Leco's shoulders, shoving him away from the rebel just enough to throw a punch. The impact hit his stomach, sending a brief wave of pain throughout his midsection. Leco staggered back and immediately closed the distance between them, throwing another punch towards the rebel's injured midsection. The closer he stayed to the rebel, the far less likely that his partner would risk taking a shot at him.

A low hum filled his ears as another punch sent Katarn back a few steps. Leco turned around and watched as his former prisoner lunged at him with an odd form of vibroblade. Hands came up nearly automatically and deflected the blade away from his body. He grabbed her wrist and used her own momentum to send her across the room on her stomach. The makeshift vibroblade skittered across the floor. A weight slammed into Leco's chest as he watched, sending him and Katarn over the upturned table and sprawling onto the floor.

A gloved hand slammed into his stomach and he coughed the air in his lungs out. The very same hands wrapped around his throat, throttling him. Leco panicked, grasping feebly at the fingers slowly compressing tighter and tighter. A faint buzzing in his ears began to steadily grow louder as his vision began to slowly fade. The knife, he thought as he searched around the area for something, anything to release the death grip upon him. How'd Ors manage to get the knife back so fast?

Leco's fingers closed around a cold cylinder on the ground. They closed around it and he swung feebly towards the agent's head. The grip of the blaster slammed into Katarn's temple, releasing the rebel's grip and sending him collapsing to the ground. Oxygen filled his lungs and Leco drank it in deeply, each and every breath he took tasting as cool as fresh spring water. He crawled on all fours away from the scene, the blaster pistol forgotten as he struggled to get back to his feet.

An explosion of pain erupted from his base of his back as a foot slammed deeply into it. Another kick from black boots aimed just under the ribs grazed him as he rolled onto his back. Leco looked at his attacker and saw the rage filled eyes of Jan Ors staring down at him.

***

She stood over her captor and watched as he moved to quickly reposition himself. Beside him, Kyle was hunched over on the ground, clutching at his head where the blaster had hit him, dark droplets of blood spattering onto the floor. Jan approached Leco carefully, eyes darting to the discarded blaster on the ground. None of the two dared to go for it and leave themselves open to an easy counterattack.

Leco had raised his legs in a guard position and kicked at her legs whenever she got too close to him. Her mind raced as she looked from her opponent to Kyle and then back again. Keep stalling, kriffer, she thought. Keep stalling and it'll be both of us against just you.

An opening appeared in Leco's defensive ring as one of his feet snagged a datapad while backing away. Jan lunged towards him, right leg aimed squarely for his gut. Her booted foot smashed a datapad as her target moved away and brought his leg out under her knees. She landed on her back hard and immediately moved to get up.

A jab from Leco grazed her jaw, its follow up ramming into her shoulder. She stumbled slightly before raising her hands up in a defensive stance. She threw a punch at the approaching commander, durasteel hand impacting on his jaw. A follow-up jab with her left hand glanced off of his raised hand. The riposte sent her tumbling into a slowly rising Kyle.

Leco spat a bloody wad of spit surrounding a tooth on the floor as he approached. The breaths of all three combatants came in short bursts. Jan was up first, the stimulants that she had injected earlier filling her bloodstream and mixing with her own natural adrenaline. She parried the Imperial's strike with her right arm and followed up with a left that hit him square in the chest.

Kyle raced in from her right, swinging slow but devastating blows towards the Imperial commander. Leco blocked or dodged them with little effort and sent a quick kick her way. It caught her on the side of the chin and sent her stumbling away, crashing into the overturned desk. Jan landed hard on her back and was slow to get up. Her watchful eyes moved from the still fighting Kyle and Leco, both of them too far into the battle to notice her.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

** CHAPTER EIGHTEEN **

The rebel had a weak spot.  That thought filled Leco's mind as he targeted it mercilessly, sending any punch that he could to towards it.  Most were blocked by Katarn, the rebel having the sense to keep a hand close to the wound to defend it.  One of the many punches got through, doubling the rebel over.

Leco glanced ahead and grabbed the agent's large coat and shoved him with all of his might into one of the many bookcases on the walls of his office.  Shelves cracked and holobooks rained down upon the downed rebel.

They both paused to get their breath.  Something jogged his memory, a similarity in the rebel's fighting style.  "Was Gresko your fighting instructor?"

Katarn slowly stood up, his eyes flickering just slightly to the side.  "He taught me almost everything," he said.  Leco began to turn to look where the rebel was staring.  "Even this!"  The rebel grabbed a holobook off of the ground and threw it towards him like a child's disc toy.  Leco felt the air around the book displace around the object as it brushed past him.

His back exploded in fire as a punch slammed into him.  He could feel the vibrating blade of the dagger as it pierced through skin and muscle, tearing through them as if it were as soft as fabric.  The floor rushed to meet Leco as he collapsed, knees hitting the soft floor and sending another spasm of pain throughout his body.

"Thanks for distracting him for me."  Ors' voice moved from behind him to the front. 

Leco looked up at her and her partner, bruises forming on their faces along with a trail of blood from the blaster butt that had hit Katarn.  "I should have..."  The words took almost all of the energy that he still had left to spit out and they slurred and frothed from the blood leaking from his mouth.  "Should've given you to Isard when I had the chance."

Jan Ors leaned down and picked up one of his discarded blasters from the ground.  She checked the setting and aimed down the scoped sights at him.  Leco stared back at her, each ragged breath bringing more pain.

"Your mistake," she said.  Leco watched as her finger moved from outside of the blaster's trigger guard to the trigger itself.  The finger began to move...

***

The blaster shot echoed through the room, followed by the sound of Leco Daam's body crashing to the ground.  Jan stood over the commander's body and dropped his blaster to the ground.  Her imprisonment and torture, as brief as it was, was finally over and her captor and assassination target lay dead at her feet.

"Let's go," she said. 

They picked up their discarded weapons in silence, walking around the destroyed room.  What was once an immaculate office now appeared to have been the epicenter of a miniaturized Base Delta Zero.  The opulent desk was now on its side, numerous blaster shots marring the finely polished surface.  Datapads and holobooks littered the floor, their discarded forms cracked on durasteel-blue carpet stained with crimson blood.

"Tarrin, this is Kyle.  Where are you?"

"Almost there.  I'm surprised they haven't rolled out the welcome for me, yet."

The pair stepped out of the office, walking down the deserted hallway.  "Is it always this quiet after you've visited a place, Kyle?"

"No.  Usually they double down and try and stop me."  He wiped a bit of the blood off of his forehead and cleaned his fingers on his body armor.  "I don't know if I should be relieved or worried."

A nagging thought about Daam's last words dug at her.  "He mentioned Isard.  This could be her doing..."

Kyle answered her question with a shrug.  "I don't know much about Isard, but what I do know that I wish she was here, too."

"You and most of the Alliance."  The two reached the stairwell in peace and were soon headed onto the roof. 

"You never did tell me how you knew I was here," she said. 

"You just said that you were grateful."

She chuckled.  "Grateful and curious."

"I don't know..."  He walked up the stairs at a slightly slower pace, the blaster wound he had beginning to get to him.  "I just _felt_ like you were in trouble."

" _Felt_ it?  That's it?"

"That's it."  He opened the door to the Academy's roof access.  The _Moldy Crow_ was already there, hovering meters above the roof.  Jan looked at the ship and despite the cramped living quarters, refresher station so small that it could barely even fit one person and the still lingering smell of Anoat sewage, saw a palace.

Her feet ached slightly as walked about the corrugated ramp, hours of running and standing with no rest finally beginning to take its toll upon her body.  She sighed as she handed Kyle her blaster rifle and he took them back into the armory.

Rapid beeping brought her back to her senses.  "I'd get up here now, because we're going to have company!"  Tarrin's shouts sounded throughout the hull of the ship, prompting Jan to race into the cockpit of the craft.  Tarrin Datch sat in her console, wearing her flight goggles and staring at a sensor screen filled with TIE fighters in the distance.  Kyle ran into the cockpit and strapped himself in to his own station, quickly turning on the ship's weapon systems on his controls.

"Let's get out of here."

The _Moldy Crow_ accelerated forward off of the roof of the building brought her "beak" up to the sky.  Jan strapped the standing crash webbing around herself and resigned herself to just watching, as risky as flying would have been to her when the stims she'd dosed herself with could wear off any minute. 

"Divert most of your weapon power to engines and shields," Tarrin ordered.  "We're not going to be able to fight our way out of this."

Kyle flipped a few switches on his console.  "Done."

The freighter flew through the large cloudcutters ahead of them, weaving from one of the large structures to another.  Green lances of energy arced past the viewports and into the building in front of them, exploding durasteel and viewports outward.  Jan viewed the sensor screen over Tarrin's shoulder.  One of the TIEs was just outside of effective firing range and thought that he could get a hit early.

"How fast can this thing go?"  Tarrin broke away from the cloudcutters and into open sky, pointing the nose of the craft towards sky once again.

"Not fast enough to outrun them," Jan said.

"Full shields to rear, then."  The craft straightened out and rocketed towards a large "plateau" of buildings acting as a base for a large entertainment district.  "I'm going to try and lose them before I break for sky."

The ship rocked as an Imperial fighter's shots were absorbed by the _Crow_ 's shielding, throwing Jan against the restraints across her shoulders.  The ship ducked to avoid a walkway between two of the cloudcutters and swung onto its side to squeeze between two narrow buildings.  One of the TIEs attempted to follow the freighter's movements, the inefficient rectangular wing-panels throwing the fighter into the walkway.  It's torn solar panel rent away from the main hull, it entered a death spin before exploding down on the streets below.

"A few are breaking off."  Kyle's voice rang clear over the roar of engines and passing buildings.  "But not many..."

Airspeeders moved aside as the freighter and her pursuing TIEs soared through the district, weaving in and out of skylanes and between buildings.  Another shot impacted upon the shields, jolting the ship.  In the skyline ahead and above them, lines of speeders and freighters began to angle upwards towards space.  "There's our break."

The _Moldy Crow_ angled upwards a minute later, joining the rest of the line.  The TIE's followed, firing at the freighter and missing.  The errant shots impacted on a _Wayfarer_ -class freighter, turning the unshielded cargo container to the side of its cockpit into a ball of fire.  The 30 meters of detached, thick durasteel tumbled to the ground a kilometer below, cargo crates and loose material spilling into the sky.

"There wasn't this much collateral damage the last time," Jan said.

"These TIEs are a bit more pissed off than that assault shuttle."

Jan smiled as she clutched the restraints around her tighter.  "Kyle and I have that effect on people.  Mainly Kyle..."

He turned from the computer console.  "Hey, _you're_ the one who just killed an Imperial commander..."

"This time."

"Can you _please_ not distract me while I'm TRYING TO SAVE ALL OF OUR LIVES?!"  The _Moldy Crow_ 's engine banks groaned under the strain of acceleration as Tarrin pushed the nose of the freighter down to avoid a Baudo yacht.  The guts of all three of its crew were shoved downwards as the pilot immediately corrected the course.

"Another one of them's pulled away," Kyle reported. 

"That leaves three."  Tarrin pushed the freighter to its limits, engines nearing the red line on their scopes.  The pursuing TIE fighters weaved along the skylanes after the _Moldy Crow_ as the Corellian-built freighter dodged shot after shot, pleasure yacht after bulk freighter.  Errant shots hit the ships beside the craft or flew off to dissipate in wild space while some managed to hit home against the shields.

"Hang on and get those guns ready."  Tarrin flipped the ship onto its back and pulled the flight stick back.  Inertial compensators strained to keep the massive gravitational forces from turning the occupants inside of the freighter into mush.  Jan's vision grayed as Tarrin pulled the ship out of its loop, two of the three TIE fighters now in front of the ship. 

Kyle fired the blaster cannon underneath the bow of the ship, catching the first TIE in between the two ion engines that gave the starfighter its name.  The explosion tore the craft apart, sending small specks of debris scratching the hull of the _Crow_.  He moved the flight stick again, the redirected controls moving the gun to target the other.  A burst of fire followed the TIE as it evaded until severing the left wing off.

The final Imperial fighter swayed in its position behind the freighter and fired another burst of shots at the _Crow_.  The TIE veered off of its course and disappeared into the sky.  "There it goes," Kyle sighed, slumping back into his chair


	20. Chapter Nineteen

** CHAPTER NINETEEN **

The medical station of the _Moldy Crow_ was a misnomer.  The small ship could barely afford the space for a full med suite and instead it was comprised of an extensive closet filled with medical supplies.  Kyle sat at the edge of his bunk, head pounding like an angry Gamorrean and the blaster wound in his stomach burning with every move that he made.

The hatch leading to the cockpit opened and Jan took a step inside.  The exhaustion on her face was exaggerated by the shadows but still painfully obvious.  "Do you need any help?"

"I think I've got it.  You?"

Jan shook her head and sat down on her own bunk.  "I'm pretty sure that the stims are wearing off.  Still, I don't want to mix them with pain meds."

Kyle undid the straps on his armor and tried to lift the bulky vest over his head.  Pain erupted from his gut as he did so.

"You're sure about that?"  One of her eyebrows rose up and she seemed to be suppressing a laugh.

"All right, maybe a little."  Kyle slowly pulled the front plate away from his stomach as Jan lifted the heavy fabric up.

Kyle rose the bottom of his shirt up and examined the wound.  Eight centimeters above his navel was a deep circle of deep crimson that slowly faded away into an irregular circumference of peeling skin.  "Good thing I brought the armor," he said.

"We'd probably both be dead now."  Jan reached into the open medkit and pulled out a bandage soaked in bacta and pressed it over the wound.

"It's a little more than a heat blister, though."

"I'm still not letting you get out of repairing the _Crow_ this time."  She secured the bandage to him with a few strips of medical tape, before cleaning the drying blood from his face. 

"We'll make Tarrin repair it, he's the one who couldn't dodge a few TIEs."

She laughed and produced a small glowlamp from the kit and shined the bright light in front of his eyes, her voice turning serious in an instant.  "Do you have a headache?  Confusion?"  He followed the light as she moved it from one corner of his vision to another, answering each question negatively.

Silence followed as they both packed the medkit away and they both stared at each other.  Words formed in the back of Kyle's mind but were pushed back almost immediately.  "Thanks," was all that he allowed himself to say.

"Well, you've already turned me into a pilot," Jan said.  "Why not add field medic to the list?"  She yawned deeply, eyes sagging shut.  She mumbled something about the stims wearing off before slowly laying down upon her cot, not even bothering with pulling the sheets back.

Kyle watched her as she slept, his own experiences using battle stims at the Imperial Academy confirming that she was going to be fine.  Nathan Donar, one of his bunkmates at the Imperial Academy, had a similar reaction.  He left the medical scanner by her bed, watching for long minutes as her vital signs slowed down to the sleep cycle, but remained normal.

He stood from his own cot and rummaged through the overhead storage, finding and removing a heavy blanket.  The blanket had been in there for years, barely needed ever since the mission to the frigid world of Anteevy.  He placed the warm covering over her, softly tucking it under the cot as best he could without waking her.  He threw on a spare shirt over the bandage.

He walked out of the crew cabin and back into the cockpit.  Outside of the viewports, the lines of Hyperspace moved.  Tarrin was sitting at his borrowed console, going over something on a datapad.  "Well, what's done is done," the young pilot said. 

"Everyone's still in one piece and so is the _Crow_.  Not bad."  Kyle sat at his own station and locked it from any further commands.

"There's still the question about how High Command's going to react to this little mission."  The worry for his career was heavy in Tarrin's voice.

"I'm going to take all the blame for it, so don't worry."  Kyle leaned back in his chair and placed his feet on top of the console.  "Mon Mothma will believe it, she doesn't like me anyway."

"I wish that you had something more than that."

"Well, Jan'll vouch for you.  Other than that, it's all you've got" 

"It was still worth it, though," Tarrin said.

"That it was,"  Kyle said.  He pulled the coat that he had left on the back of his chair over him.  It smelled of blood and burnt leather, but it still made for a decent blanket.  "Go ahead and take my bunk for the rest of the trip."

"You're sure?"

Kyle adjusted the coat over his body, fatigue already creeping through his body.  "I'm not going to let a guest on my ship go without one."  An amusing memory of Moff Rebus screaming in the rancid decontamination shower popped into his mind.  "Well, unless you're an Imperial."


	21. Epilogue

** EPILOGUE **

Mon Mothma's office aboard the _New Hope_ was more crowded than it usually was.  Around the once opulent room were some of the Alliance's top beings.  The leader of the Rebel Alliance wore one of her many white gowns so common among Chandrilans, this one nicer than others with a red trim along the folds.  She was flanked by the Crix Madine, the reddish-blond haired general sitting in his standard dress uniform, and Admiral Gial Ackbar, the Mon Calamari commander of the Alliance's navy.  Carlist Rieeken joined them from Starfighter Command, as did General Cracken from Alliance Intelligence.

Tarrin Datch sat before them, dressed in his gold jacketed pilot's dress uniform.  He looked each of them in the eyes as Mon Mothma cleared her throat.  "Lieutenant Tarrin Datch, please stand."  The pilot stood up as directed, straightening his uniform.

Mon Mothma glanced down at her datapad before standing.  "In the charges against you: partaking in an unauthorized military exercise, it is in the opinion of this court-martial that you are not guilty."  The pilot struggled to contain his relief and Jan was happy that Kyle's excuses had been believed for once.

"In the matter of Prevaricating to a Superior Officer in the manner of your leave, we find you guilty."

Carlist Rieeken stood to join Mon Mothma.  "Lieutenant Datch, you are to be stripped of  your current rank and privileges and returned to the rank of Flight Officer.  Your combat flight status is stripped for a period of five months, to be evaluated in three months time.  Do you understand the sentence, Ensign?"

Datch saluted the assembly before him.  "Yes, sir."

"If I may say something," Airen Cracken said.  The 50 year old Director of Alliance Intelligence stood from his seat while the others sat down.  "The rescue of an Alliance intelligence agent from behind enemy lines was a courageous act, whether you knew it to be authorized or not."  There was a slight glint in his eyes, and Jan knew that he had seen through the ruse.  "It was because of that act that I was able to reduce your sentence, and have you avoid time in the brig for it."

"I'm grateful, General."

"Now, make me and the rest of us grateful and don't let it happen again."  Cracken took his seat and Datch was dismissed from the room.  The others left save for Cracken and Madine, filing out as their jobs in the matter were finished.

"Captain Ors," Mon Mothma said as they both stood from their seats.  "This court-martial thanks you for your testimony, and for your completed mission.  I dislike the very notion of assassinations, but I was outvoted.  The safety of Alliance personnel and secrets throughout the galaxy is safe because of you."

"I appreciate that, Mon Mothma, but I couldn't have done it without Tarrin and Kyle."

"Perhaps you're worried about what will be done with your partner?"  Mon Mothma's tone had turned motherly, the same way that it did whenever anyone in the Alliance had an issue that needed her help.

"I am."

"His situation is a difficult one, doubly so now.  He has never officially joined the Alliance, but has worked with us constantly for the past four years.  He purchased the ship assigned to him, but still has quarters on board this ship." 

"The fact is, as untrustworthy as he is and dangerous his actions, we don't have anything to charge him with, save for theft of Alliance fuel, and as petty as that is, we're going to drop that matter."  Her blue eyes looked towards the table where she had left her datapad.  "Furthermore, an additional complication has come up.  While he was off rescuing you, Madine and I received word of an important mission to be done in the D'rinba system.  Madine assigned General Shelvay to lead it and Corwin specifically asked for Kyle.  He goes on this mission and the matter will be considered permanently closed."

Jan allowed herself a slight smile at the news.  "I'll let him know."

 

***

Stormtroopers moved through the chaos that was once the Imperial Academy of Interrogators, flanking the dark-haired woman in a red uniform.  Ysanne Isard had seen numerous bases destroyed throughout her years in Imperial Intelligence, but the sight of one of her own in such a state hardened her heart.

The dormitories of the building had been a separate story.  Other than the results of the unfortunate shootout that had captured the Rebel spy, it had remained completely untouched.  The two remaining squads of Leco's Stormtroopers stood at attention next to the dozen that remained of his students.

"I take it that it's been an exciting term this year."  Her statement caused many of the students to murmur nervously amongst themselves.  "You've seen the price of arrogance in Imperial Intelligence: your instructor is dead and so is one of your own."  She looked at one of her guards, who whispered a name into her ear.  "Donlat Tascel could have been a great use to us, but now he's gone as a result of the arrogance and inadequacy of Commander Leco Daam."

She walked over to the lead Stormtrooper near the students.  "What is your name, soldier?"

The filtered voice at the other end of the helmet stammered heavily.  "Sergeant-Major Harmat, Director Isard."

"My surveillance indicates that you fled from the battle with the entirety of your garrison after Lieutenant Vanet was killed."

"Yes, ma'am.  We fled when your stormtroopers got your order to pull out."

Isard glared at the soldier, her eyes reflecting off of the black eyepieces of his helmet.  Her glare could unnerve even the Emperor himself, she bragged, so the Force only knew what it was doing to the officer.  "Were you ordered by your own commanding officer to flee?"

"N-no, ma'am."

Isard walked back to her own soldiers.  "As I thought."  She gestured to her own soldiers and their blasters raised in unison.  A single blast of blaster fire cut through the line of Daam's soldiers.  The agents around the dead or dying troops reacted in many ways.  Those closer to the slaughter screamed out in shock and fear, a natural emotion that Isard didn't fault them for.  Others hid their fear behind a stoic mask.

"You."  She pointed towards Cedral, who dutifully stepped forward.  The nervous bunch of students behind him quickly hurried away.  "You were with Leco as he failed to protect you and your colleagues.  Until the end...  You ran away and were captured briefly by the rebels.  What did you tell them?"

"They wanted to know where the commander was, ma'am.  I broke."  Any fear that the young man had was hidden well behind a stoic face.

"Why were you even in that area?  Did you flee once it was apparent that the school could not be defended?"

"No, I mean y-yes, I mean..."

Isard used her unnerving glare again.  "Make up your mind, lieutenant.  Yes, or no?"

Cedral swallowed hard.  "Commander Daam told me that I could either stay in his office or leave.  I left."

"I don't expect my agents to be stupid, Cedral, you may return to the others."

"Thank you, ma'am."

Isard walked in front of the remaining agents, surveying them.  "As I was saying, your instructor is dead and this facility is in need of a new one.  Until such a time as one can be produced, I shall be taking over."

 

***

Kyle Katarn walked down the busy hallways of the dreadnought _New Hope_ , Jan Ors and himself shuffling through the teeming crewmembers.  The bacta patch treatments on board the _Moldy Crow_ had reduced the pain of his blaster wound to a mild discomfort at its very worst.

"So, one mission and Mon Mothma's dropping the whole thing?"

Jan slowed down to allow a fast moving stomach droid to move down the hallway.  "That's what she said to me."

Kyle scoffed at the notion.  "What's the mission?  Head back to Coruscant, sneak into the Imperial Palace and kill the Emperor?"

A slight chuckle escaped Jan.  "Dangerous, yes, but not _that_ dangerous.  At least that's what I gathered.  She didn't really give me a lot of details."

"So I take it that you're not going to be part of it."

"Mon Mothma says that General Shelvay already has a pilot for the mission picked out."

"General Shelvay?  Have you ever heard of this guy?"

The two neared the door to the Mon Mothma's office where the meeting was to take place.  "He's supposed to be some sort of Force-user, though he didn't pull off any spectacular stunts when I was on a mission with him."

"This is where I leave you, then."

Jan pointed a finger at him, playfully poking him in the chest.  "Whatever you're doing, be careful.  I don't want to have to do the same thing you just did."

"Come on Jan, you know me."  He thumbed the door open and began to step foot inside.

"I do, that's why I said it!"

Mon Mothma was absent from the room, replaced by Crix Madine.  "Welcome, Kyle."  The general walked around the table, past a graying man in a simple Alliance uniform and a dark-haired agent near Kyle's own age.  The third person in the room was a woman dressed in an orange jumpsuit, a captain's rank insignia upon her breast. 

"May I present, General Corwin Shelvay, Commander Erling Tredway and Captain Shira Brie."

Madine activated the holoprojector, the image of a half constructed sphere appearing before the assembled group.  Kyle viewed the image as it turned, a maze of turbo laser emplacements and hangar bays, the giant superlaser on the northern hemisphere: it was another Death Star.

"As we speak, this second Death Star is moving from its construction facility to the Moddell sector.  Agents in the D'rinba system have begun stepping up activities to attempt to lure the battle station to the planet.  That's where you come in."  Madine clicked a button on the holoprojector, shifting the view to the large superlaser.

"You will insert yourselves onto the station and disable the superlaser, both to save D'rinba IV and to keep it from pulling off another Alderaan while we plan further offensives against it."

"Further offenses?"  Shira's green eyes seemed to light up before she regained her composure.

"Nothing duracrete at the moment, or concerning any of you."

The meeting continued on for the next several minutes, detailing all that Alliance intelligence knew about the second Death Star and their mission to plant several explosive devices at key points throughout the quadrant of the massive battlestation.

"Another Death Star," Shira Brie said as the meeting adjourned.  "I never thought I'd see the day."

"I'm not exactly thrilled about it, either."  Kyle stared at the hologram of the sphere as he prepared to leave for the group's shuttle.

"Don't worry."  Shira smiled broadly.  "I'm certain that _all_ of us will do our duty."

**Author's Note:**

> * Both Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors originated in the Dark Forces computer game written and developed by Justin Chin for LucasArts.
> 
> * The action packed opening about something tangentel to the plot is borrowed from the James Bond series. It's somewhat fitting, as I intended this story to be a spy story/action thriller.
> 
> * This mission is the one hinted at in the closing scene of Surviving Hope, where my OC contacts Jan Ors to hire the pair to recover a reputed database of Imperial prison camps where captive Rebels of Hoth have been taken.
> 
> * We have our first hint of Kyle's Force sensitivity in him "feeling" that there'd be Stormtroopers beyond the door. As I've noted before, one of the more difficult things to do when writing Force sensitives is to find the exact point of being able to subconsciously use powers. 
> 
> * I wanted the Moldy Crow's entrance to be like an attack helicopter coming to save the day in some old war movie. It sits above the roof, hovering, and then launches its complete payload at the chasing enemy. It also follows a very basic premise in the Dark Forces Saga: Kyle gets in trouble and Jan bails him out.


End file.
